{"id":71522,"date":"2025-11-27T01:47:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T01:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/71522\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T01:47:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T01:47:06","slug":"rancho-santa-margarita-wins-court-case-does-not-have-to-pay-500000-in-legal-fees-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/71522\/","title":{"rendered":"Rancho Santa Margarita wins court case, does not have to pay $500,000 in legal fees \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An Orange County Superior Court judge sided with the City of Rancho Santa Margarita last week in a ruling that spared the city from paying $500,000 in legal fees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are very appreciative of the Court\u2019s thorough review of this matter,\u201d Mayor Tony Beall said in a statement after the ruling by Judge Sheila Recio. \u201cThe evidence was abundantly clear: this was a meritless lawsuit based on a frivolous demand for payment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The conflict that spurred Jackson vs. City of Rancho Santa Margarita spans back to June 2023 when Dana Point-based attorney Michelle Jackson sent a letter to Rancho Santa Margarita alleging that the city violated the <a href=\"https:\/\/leginfo.legislature.ca.gov\/faces\/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB182\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">California Voting Rights Act<\/a> by holding at-large elections that disenfranchised minorities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you look at the consolidation of council members, they tend to all come from the same area. And there\u2019s very little representation for any of the other areas in the city,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/datausa.io\/profile\/geo\/rancho-santa-margarita-ca\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2023 Census data<\/a>, Rancho Santa Margarita has a population of about 47,300 people and 20% of residents identify as Hispanic.<\/p>\n<p>Jackson later submitted to the city an invoice for her attorney fees for her work drafting up that letter threatening a lawsuit \u2014 chalking up to about $38,000.<\/p>\n<p>Before deciding whether to reimburse Jackson, the city asked her to identify a plaintiff on whose behalf the demand later was submitted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe plaintiff was terrified so my goal was to protect them,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cBut I did offer to confidentially displace the name.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jackson did not provide a plaintiff and the city withheld payment.<\/p>\n<p>She later filed a lawsuit against the city in August of last year, asking for $500,000 in total compensation and legal fees for that initial unpaid invoice. The judge ultimately ruled against her favor, on the basis that Jackson did not provide a plaintiff, and the city owes $0 in reimbursement.<\/p>\n<p>Jackson has 60 days to appeal the decision, which she says she intends to do.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not asking for $30,000 anymore. My attorney fee is already in the hundreds of thousands. So my attorney fees, their attorney fees \u2014 it\u2019s gonna be astronomical for the city,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel bad, but this is ridiculous that they\u2019re doing this. This has got to be the most fiscally negligent thing I\u2019ve ever heard of.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Orange County Superior Court judge sided with the City of Rancho Santa Margarita last week in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,7,1610,989,1846,1071,23,611,2464],"class_list":{"0":"post-71522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-city-council","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-lawsuit","15":"tag-local-government","16":"tag-local-news","17":"tag-orange-county","18":"tag-rancho-santa-margarita"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}