OAKLAND — With her long political career ending — and facing an arrest warrant if she did not show — Councilwoman Desley Brooks finally appeared in court Tuesday to answer why she hasn’t paid a lawsuit judgment stemming from her alleged assault of former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown.
Brown’s attorney estimates Brooks owes damages, attorney fees and other court costs totaling $215,000, a figure the councilwoman’s lawyer disputes. If not paid in full by the end of the year, attorney Charles Bonner is threatening to go after Brooks’ East Oakland home.
“She hasn’t paid anything to date,” Bonner, Brown’s attorney said. “It’s long overdue.”
Brown filed suit against Brooks and the city in 2016, alleging Brooks shoved her during a heated exchange a year earlier inside Everett & Jones barbecue joint in Jack London Square. Brown fell over a table and chairs, injuring her shoulder.
After a December 2017 jury trial found Brooks committed elder abuse against Brown, an Alameda County Superior Court judge ordered the city to pay $2.2 million in damages and attorney fees, and Brooks to pay $75,000 in punitive damages to Brown.
It was another in a long history of controversies involving Brooks. She often sparred with her council colleagues and had a hard time keeping staff. She ran afoul of city rules by taking over management of a teen center in her district and hiring contractors without bids and using city staff on the project, according to City Auditor Courtney Ruby and the Alameda County grand jury. Most recently, the city’s ethics commission is investigating whether her involvement in the Millsmont Farmers Market was proper.
Oakland’s $2.2 million check to Brown and her legal team was cashed on July 20, City Attorney spokesman Alex Katz said. Because Brooks has not paid her share, Bonner placed a lien on her East Oakland property as part of an abstract judgment this fall, precluding Brooks from selling the home, county records show.
Bonner gave her a deadline of Dec. 31. “Either she pays us,” the lawyer said, or they move ahead with foreclosure of the home, valued at more than $1 million.
Dan Siegel, Brooks’ attorney, said his client is prepared to pay $75,000 plus interest before the New Year. Siegel said the other fees Bonner says Brooks owes are “not allowable.”
“I have to convince Charles that his understanding of what that amounts to is quite exaggerated and out of her ability to pay because she’s about to be unemployed,” Siegel said.
Brooks lost re-election in November to Loren Taylor, ending her 16-year career as the representative of District 6 in East Oakland. Brooks’ final City Council meeting was earlier this month; Taylor will be sworn in to office in January.
In the months after the judge ordered Brooks to pay damages, employees of the Bonner & Bonner law firm say the councilwoman ducked subpoenas to appear in court. Several of those attempts to have Brooks produce financial documents were unsuccessful, said law firm employee Isaac Magar.
“We couldn’t find her, a couple of meetings were cancelled that she was supposed to chair,” Magar said in a phone interview. “We waited for her at City Hall, and she wasn’t showing up.”
Court records show Magar eventually served Brooks with the documents on Oct. 30 during a candidate forum at an East Oakland church. When Brooks failed to show up for a Dec. 12 court hearing, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Paul Herbert said he would issue a $10,000 arrest warrant if she did not appear at Tuesday’s hearing. Brooks was there.
Siegel said Brooks was unable to attend city meetings due to a “serious illness involving a close family member.” He argued that Brooks was not properly served with a subpoena in this case. In one case, it was actually her sister who was served, he said. In another, Siegel said the documents related to a separate lawsuit filed against Brooks by her former aide, Sidney Wilson, another client of Bonner’s.
Wilson’s lawsuit, which is moving forward in superior court, paints Brooks as an abusive boss who directed him to “illegally” manage an East Oakland farmer’s market.
Responding to Bonner’s threat of foreclosure, Siegel said, “he’s gonna do what he’s gonna do. If he does things that aren’t proper, I will be taking appropriate actions.”