When Dallas County Commissioner Andrew Sommerman made a motion to withhold pay increases from top juvenile probation officials last month for their refusal to turn over records of youth detainees, he said he was being a “hammer.”
But Sommerman and his fellow Dallas County Commissioners could end up being the nail, according to a new lawsuit filed over the weekend by Dallas County Juvenile Department.
The legal battle between the Dallas County Juvenile officials and the Dallas County Commissioners Court escalated Friday night when lawyers for the juvenile care officials filed an amended complaint calling the commissioners’ decision three weeks ago to withhold their pay increases illegal and seeking to have it immediately voided.
The dispute began when Sommerman, who joined the nine-member Juvenile Department board earlier this year, demanded in May to see thousands and thousands of pages of “observation sheets” of about 200 children after receiving complaints of detainees being held for lengthy periods in solitary confinement.
The Dallas County Juvenile board hired Brian Hail of Kane Russell Coleman Logan and Texas juvenile law expert Frank Adler to sue the Dallas County Commissioners.
In August, Dallas District Judge Eric Moyé ruled in favor of the juvenile probation officials, stating that “the Commissioners Court had failed to show the requisite statutory authority” to obtain the records and that it had “not provided authority to this Court that justifies the issuance and execution and compliance with its subpoena; so, therefore, the Motion to Compel is denied.”
On September 12, three of five members of the Dallas Commission voted to approve a budget amendment to withhold five-percent pay increases for top Juvenile Probation officials, including executive director Darryl Beatty, DCJD General Counsel Denika Caruthers, the clinics psychologists and other leaders, for continuing to refuse to turn over the records despite Judge Moyé’s order.
“This is the hammer,” Sommerman told The Dallas Morning News when asked about the reason for the compensation decision.
Late Friday, Hail and the Juvenile Probation Board fired back with a 24-page amended petition that puts the case back before Judge Moyé.
“Rather than graciously accepting this court’s decision or being content with pursuing an appeal through proper channels, Commissioner Sommerman and two other members of the Commissioners Court have chosen to brazenly retaliate against the senior leadership of the DCJD,” the complaint states. “Plaintiffs at least credit Commissioner Sommerman with being honest, as there is no legitimate basis for the amendment. It is clearly designed to punish the DCJD leadership for refusing to provide documents that this court has already determined they do not have to provide as a matter of law.”
The petition states that the Dallas commissioners “failed to comply with open meetings act law regarding the required notice for this purported amendment to the budget by failing to give adequate notice of the specific content of Commissioner Sommerman’s last–minute oral amendment to the budget and by potentially discussing and deliberating on the amendment in an unlawful executive session outside of public scrutiny.”
Dallas lawyer Jennifer Richards has represented Dallas County commissioners in previous hearings on this matter.
The case is Dallas County Juvenile Department v. Dallas County Commissioners Court, Dallas County District Court, Cause No. DC-23-07024.