The Glamorous Grind
The Glamorous Grind is where bold legal minds meet unfiltered conversations. Join hosts Ilona Antonyan and Mila Arutunian—powerhouse attorneys at Antonyan Miranda—for this dynamic podcast as they dive into headline-making lawsuits, past cases, and the hustle of balancing career, family, and ambition. With fascinating guests, including celebrities, business leaders, and former clients, Ilona and Mila keep it raw, real, and always glamorous.
The Glamorous Grind
Fighting the System: The Dark Truth about CPS
A powerful government agency with minimal oversight. Children separated from parents based on personal conflicts. Social workers who lie in court reports with no consequences. This isn't dystopian fiction—it's the reality of child welfare systems across America.
Sean McMillan, a pioneering civil rights attorney, pulls back the curtain on one of the most devastating abuses of power affecting families today: judicial deception in child protective services. After stumbling into this specialized practice through a case referred by his father, McMillan discovered a pattern of constitutional violations that permanently alter lives yet receive little public attention.
"The only method of escalation they have is take your kid," McMillan explains, highlighting the dangerous power imbalance when undertrained, unlicensed social workers develop personal conflicts with parents. Unlike police officers with extensive training and oversight, these government employees can separate families based on subjective impressions rather than genuine safety concerns. Even more troubling, those who fabricate evidence rarely face consequences—many receive promotions or simply transfer to different departments.
Through landmark cases that have changed policies across California, McMillan fights for parents caught in a system designed to justify its own actions rather than protect children appropriately. His $4.9 million verdict for a mother who lost her children for six and a half years after a minor disagreement with a social worker exemplifies the life-altering consequences of unchecked government power.
For anyone navigating the family court system, concerned about civil rights, or simply interested in how justice functions when the playing field is dramatically uneven, this episode offers crucial insights from someone devoting his career to holding powerful institutions accountable. McMillan's work reminds us that true justice requires not just legal expertise but the courage to challenge systems that harm those they claim to protect.
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God forbid. There's a person in a situation where their children are taken from them by Child Protective Services, what do you do?
Shawn:As attorneys, our clients. They really put all of their trust.
Ilona:People don't listen to children. Sometimes the child is explaining what's happening and then, because court didn't like my client, the child wasn't believed. How do you prove?
Mila:someone is lying.
Shawn:Something is needed. There are kids out there that need help.
Ilona:Welcome to the Glamorous Grind where grit meets glamour and law is always in style. I'm Alona Antonian, a trial attorney and a certified family law specialist.
Mila:And I'm Mila Aratunian, a trial attorney who specializes in employment and personal injury law. We are lawyers friends and your go-to guides for real-life legal drama.
Ilona:Every week, we're diving into unforgettable cases, sharing inspiring personal stories and keeping you in the loop on what drives us, motivates us.
Mila:So, whether you're chasing your dreams or just here for a captivating story, grab your favorite drink, because we are serving up insight, wit and a touch of style, it's law, it's life, it's a glamorous grind.
Ilona:Hey everyone, welcome back. We're so excited about today's episode. We have a truly inspiring guest joining us, someone who's not only made a name for himself in the legal world, but is also a passionate advocate for civil rights. My good friend.
Mila:Sean McMillan is here. His career is such a testament to hard work and dedication. He's worked on high-profile cases, fought for children and families in the child protection system and has earned countless accolades for his trial work.
Ilona:He has taken his skills from business litigation and translated them into a powerful force for change in civil rights law. It's not just about winning cases. It's about using the law to truly impact lives.
Mila:So if you're looking for some real inspiration about following your passions, making an impact and doing the hard work it takes to succeed, this episode is definitely for you. Get ready and join us in welcoming Sean. Thank you so much for joining us. It's an absolute privilege to have you here today. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Shawn:Sure Well, first, thanks for having me. I don't know about privilege, but you specialize in suing CWS.
Ilona:Can you tell us more about that?
Shawn:What I specialize in. I refer to it more as constitutional laws. Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment People who aren't attorneys, I think, are more familiar with Child Protective Services or Child Protective Agencies, and that's who I sue. Generally we sue them when a caseworker has a conflict of some sort with a parent. They'll do things like lie about them in their reports to justify whatever escalation happened, and usually the escalation is they took your kids and so we do a lot of that. We call that judicial deception and that's where they'll either lie or suppress material exculpatory evidence in their reports from the court.
Shawn:I've seen that happen in my family law cases.
Ilona:And one specifically. I'm going to have that client as a guest in our show in the near future. But you know it was a battle for over nine years. She finally got her daughter back. It was through family court mostly, but child welfare services. They didn't like her too much and I attended several of their meetings and interviews. I mean to the point where I had to poke my client with a pen, like, okay, just behave Like. I know you're passionate and your truth is. Her truth was the truth. But you got to carry yourself a certain way because it's so easy to make enemies. If they don't like you for some reason, they can side with the other parent who can be a total ass and bad to their children, but present absolutely differently in front of third parties and be manipulative with CWS and they'll write reports in their favor.
Shawn:It's not even necessarily that it's. This is the problem with the social workers. Number one they're not cops, right? So they don't get the same training, they don't have the same level of professionalism. And I'm not saying all police are great. I mean, we have our examples out there that you see on the news, stuff like that. But generally speaking, I think that police do a pretty good job. They're highly trained, they're very well supervised, all eyes are on them. But you can't equate social workers with cops. They don't get that level of training, they don't get that level of supervision and they're not licensed. They're not like licensed clinical social workers. They don't have that same level of professionalism and they are human. So you have to recognize that.
Shawn:And I would say the vast majority of my judicial deception cases came out of family law custody battles where one parent calls social services. It doesn't matter which parent, it's the same issue Social services will come out and the social worker, being human that's not as professional as we might like and not as well trained as we might like will interact with those parents. And if the parents don't give them sufficient respect or aren't sufficiently deferential, they'll immediately develop a bad impression. Maybe If one of the parents is maybe highly educated, knows what their rights are, and starts sort of throwing that kind of language around the social worker. The only method of escalation they have is take your kid. Really, that's all. They have Police, they have all kinds of things they can do. Social workers don't have that. The only thing they have is taking your kid. And once they make that decision to take your kid, if they don't justify it, they know they're in trouble.
Ilona:And often, when I looked at CWS reports, they'll have summaries of conversations rather than specific quotes, and sometimes, if a client insists, they'll let you record the meeting, although they may not like it.
Ilona:And most of the meetings are not recorded right. And then if you're in family court and you obtain CWS records, first of all it's really hard because they're confidential and they're protected. So by the time you get them, by the time you get the judge to look at them, then you read them and you have to bring those social workers to court and then some of them may work at that point for the government, some may not. They don't have their notes, they don't bring the notes, and then they always support the statements they've put in, although they may not have recollection. But there's no specific quote, just their summaries.
Shawn:And if they formed a negative impression against one of the parties, not based on facts but on personal feelings, yeah, they'll sort of tailor their summary to fit whatever narrative it is they want to advance to the court to support whatever their earlier decision was. That's generally what we see.
Ilona:You know that movie that was on Netflix.
Shawn:Oh, is that the Gabriel Fernandez? Yes, Gabriel.
Ilona:Fernandez, have you seen it?
Shawn:I haven't seen it. I know about it, I've heard about it. I was following that when it was all happening. A lot of the cases I generally know about them or see them or sometimes consult on them, just because there are so few people nationwide actually that do this work that eventually I know this sounds kind of cocky or whatever, but all roads in this area eventually lead to me.
Ilona:Now, not all social workers are bad, but there are a few that kind of go there, do their job and leave and they don't really care as much, and that's why these low-.
Shawn:Yeah they're not all bad.
Ilona:Yeah.
Mila:Well, and I think that probably sometimes it's not that they're bad per se, it's just like you said, they're not well-trained or they're human. They can be biased and I think bias training-.
Shawn:Bias is huge. It's huge, it's huge in child welfare services and that is what we see mostly in the judicial deception or retaliation type cases. I had one up in Orange County it's actually the first one I ever did Basically what had happened. There's this lady, former Miss California, beautiful woman, very intelligent, highly educated, and she is in a custody battle with her husband and I don't remember exactly how social services got involved, but they did, and there was a conflict between the line-level worker not even the supervisor, the line-level worker and the mom, and it wasn't, from the mom's perspective, even really a conflict. She was just explaining the situation and the social worker took an attitude with her and they kind of got into a not even a yelling match. It was just sort of a strong conversation. The social worker got upset, ran into court and said that mom had attacked her or something like that to the judge, and the judge issued a forthwith removal order right there on the spot, said go get the kids right now. This is, we're done with this. And she lost her kids for six and a half years. And so she called me up and said will you do this case? And I said no, I won't do that. That's dumb. I mean, of course the lady probably did something bad. That's why they took her kid and so I rejected it.
Shawn:I'd never done a civil rights case. I had no idea constitutional law was something you study in law school. So I get this call like three days later from my dad and I'm in the shower, I'm like all soapy and my wife comes in and she says it's an emergency. You got to talk to your dad. I was all shit. I thought somebody died and so I rinse off. I get out. I was like, yeah, what's up? He's, oh, this lady's going to call you in like five minutes. So she calls. My dad told me I already talked to her. I already told her that you would take her case.
Mila:That sounds like something my mom would do.
Shawn:What do you do? I mean, it's your dad, right?
Mila:Was that your first case? Is that how you got into the field?
Shawn:That's how I got in the field, wow, and what happened? Did you win? Yeah, we got a unanimous verdict. It's $4.9 million a five-week jury trial up in Orange County. They appealed it and they lost on appeal and then they did a petition for cert to the Supreme Court and that got rejected. That was a scary story. By then, yeah, they had taken a $4.9 million verdict and turned it into a $10 million judgment, just with interest and attorney's fees.
Mila:Just for our viewers. I want to just explain how in some cases you can get, in addition to whatever jury verdict you receive from the jury you can get any attorney's fees for time you spent on the case, for legal fees you spent on the case. You can actually do that also in employment law in California. Right, for legal fees you spent on the case. You can actually do that also in employment law in California and the legislature puts these things in place so that attorneys are incentivized to take hard cases.
Shawn:Right, right, that's exactly. Tell the judges, though.
Ilona:They always want to cut you back. You probably ought to take a lot of depositions.
Shawn:Oh yeah.
Ilona:So how much do you have to put out of pocket? If this was a contingency case to prevail ultimately.
Shawn:I think in that case we had like 30 depositions. They were a lot cheaper back then than they are now. I think it was probably $2,500 per depo.
Mila:Well and again.
Mila:I just want to explain, just for our viewers, that whenever a law firm or an attorney takes a case on contingency which means that they don't charge the client anything but they take a percentage of whatever they end up getting for the case, they have to pay, most of the time, all of the costs out of pocket. So everything they do, every deposition they take, they have to invest their own money to take those depositions. So 30 depositions if they were $2,500 per deposition, I mean, I'm not a mathematician but that's a lot of money. And then you have to pay for each of the transcripts. Sometimes you have to pay witness fees for like them coming out and participating in the deposition. If you hire experts, that's more costs. So it's a very expensive investment when you have a lot of witnesses in a case. So I want to ask you one question because I'm like my mind is still stuck there when you were talking about that civil rights case and the woman lost her kids for six years.
Shawn:Yeah, six and a half.
Mila:To me not as a lawyer but as a mom it is insanity that someone would lose out on six years of raising their kids. I mean as a mom. I mean my oldest is eight, but you have such a limited time with your kids 18 years is nothing, and after like 10, they don't even want to hang out with you. So these people have to fight these government agencies just to have their children. It's not like they're fighting. It's insane to me. How do you deal with the emotional toll that all of that comes with?
Shawn:It's not actually easy. I can tell you this particular case. I didn't really believe the client. I thought it was all crap. But it was another trial and I was chasing trials at the time and it wasn't until the defendants started putting up their case that it hit me that, oh shit, this really happened. You know, these witches really did do what the client said they did and I had this tremendous feeling of guilt as attorneys our clients they really put all of their trust. I just had this feeling that I completely failed this lady, and so I worked really hard. But by the end it worked out Like I said, we got a unanimous jury verdict and it was a good verdict at the time.
Ilona:What was the cause of action? Negligence.
Shawn:No, it was 42 USC Section 1983. It was a violation of her 14th Amendment rights.
Ilona:Okay.
Shawn:Yeah, the social workers lied about her, basically denied her due process and, as a result, she lost her kids for six and a half years.
Ilona:I remember a days I did a few jury trials myself earlier in my career and when you're stuck like that in trial and you don't get any sleep. I remember after one of my trials ended up going to Las Vegas to a conference and just like walking. I always remember this moment when I'm on a bridge from wind going across and I remember feeling sun touching my skin and the warmth and I was so grateful for good weather and to be out in the sun and I still feel that moment of how good it felt to be free.
Shawn:You're free just for that moment.
Mila:Yeah, so it sounds like there aren't a lot of attorneys that handle these types of matters.
Shawn:There's not.
Mila:And I would assume that it's because of all of the obstacles in bringing claims against CPS, just like other governmental entities, because they have so many immunities, and especially in a case like this where it's a lot of he said, she said.
Shawn:Yeah.
Mila:So how do you like overcome those? Talk to us a little bit about some of the challenges and obstacles ensuing these governmental entities the shucking and jiving man.
Shawn:Back then there was really no Ninth Circuit case law that focused on this judicial deception question of whether or not a social worker can lie in their reports. There was really nothing out there. And right as I was putting together our opposition, a new case came out of the Ninth Circuit. It was like days before my opposition was due. It got published on Lexis and it was called Beltran versus County of Santa Clara. So I saw that. I looked at who the attorney was. I called the guy up and said, hey, can I have your briefing? And so he sent me all his stuff. His name's Bob Powell.
Mila:I love it when they do that yeah.
Shawn:So he sent me all of his stuff and it was a published decision and so I took that. That's what I argued.
Ilona:It's kind of surprising that the court, even on that level, would rule that the government can lie when they're there to protect children and that it's okay for them to have immunity and do whatever the hell they want and just get away with it.
Shawn:Up until 2007, social workers were given massive leeway because the idea was that they act as prosecutors and we give prosecutors prosecutorial immunity, so anything connected with that judicial process of prosecuting they're immune and that was what they were applying to social workers. But social workers have two functions really. One is investigatory right and the other is sort of prosecutorial, in that they make a decision about whether or not to initiate a dependency petition or dependency proceeding, and that decision itself. We can't sue them for it, because the decision to initiate the process is prosecutorial in nature. But every other thing they do is not.
Mila:Well then my question would be how do you prove someone is lying, Like if, for example, in this case they look like liars Like if, for example, in this case, but if they state like someone is, you know, hostile or aggressive towards them, that could be a subjective opinion and maybe to them they're telling the truth and they believe that. And again it goes back to biases, and so many biases are implicit. I mean, as an employment attorney, I've done a ton of training on bias and bias in the legal profession and bias in every profession, Like from an HR perspective. It's so important in the workplace but it's even more important for social workers because some of the biases, most of the biases, it's not a conscious decision to dislike someone, it's whatever foundationally they believe. They, you know, use that to make their decisions, which formulates their perception, which in their mind they're telling the truth, but maybe it's not. How do you prove that, Can you?
Shawn:I don't think anybody who lies ever thinks they're telling the truth. I think where bias comes into it and it's not bias in the sense that we talk about bias socially, where maybe I have implicit bias against women or Hispanics I think that it's more like a transactional bias where for some reason, I don't like you so I am going to allow that dislike of you, for whatever reason, to influence or shade my view of you and the way that I write about you, the things I say about you, so that it's bias, but it's not the type of bias I think that you're talking about.
Ilona:What do you think should be the criteria for someone to be hired to be a social worker?
Shawn:I think they should be police. I don't think we should have social services in the way that we have it right now.
Ilona:I think it's a completely defective model. What do you think would be better? What would be a better model?
Shawn:I think the better model would be that if there's child abuse and it rises to the level of criminality it's a crime, then we have highly trained, highly competent, very professional police force available to go do those investigations. If there's child abuse, arrest the parent and then we do something with the child. But the way it is right now. I can give you an example. I have a mom who lost custody of her child or daughter allegedly for emotional abuse because she was texting too much.
Mila:The mom was texting too much With her daughter.
Shawn:With her daughter.
Ilona:yeah, that's so weird.
Shawn:Exactly, that's like everything in America. Everything has taken two steps too far so tell me, should that mom have lost her child? Yeah, of course not. Was the social worker involved a good or solid person? Well, maybe.
Ilona:Well, what was the content of text messages? Were they appropriate? Or if it says you know you're this and that I'm going to kill you, or like, really it wasn't stuff like that.
Mila:Threatening, yeah, but I think that. I mean, I think that, like back in the day, our parents were a lot harsher on us too, and now we are expected to be very soft on our kids and I have parents at, you know, my son's school who are like, oh, my child is doing bad in school and blame it on the teachers.
Shawn:Can't always not blame the teachers. Sometimes there's stuff going on there. But back to your question, or I guess not really question, but sort of the little pushback on the system being necessary. Something is needed. All right, we can all agree that there are kids out there that need help. I mean there's been a massive change in law. You know there's been a core group of attorneys there's like eight of us in the state that do this work regularly, like as a calling. I guess it's what we do, it's all we do, and a few of them are here in San Diego. There's a couple up in the Bay Area and we've got it to the point now where there's no absolute immunity for anything other than the decision to file a petition. You get absolute immunity for that.
Shawn:And now what we're working on is bringing in these private parties, like we have Rady's Children's Hospital right. They collude with social services to do these medical evaluations where they really don't even look at the kid, they just look at the record and then come up with some bullshit. Why do they do that? I've always assumed they get money for it.
Mila:Yeah, that's what I'm wondering Probably from.
Shawn:Medi-Cal would be my guess. We haven't really done discovery on that yet, but we're looping those guys in and we have a couple of good appellate opinions saying that, yeah, when this private hospital comes in, either under contract or some other reason, and interacts with the government to take kids, they're going to be treated just like a government actor.
Mila:I love that.
Shawn:So we can pull them in. Now we have a bunch of lawsuits against Rady Children's Hospital for that.
Ilona:People don't listen to children. Sometimes At least I've noticed even in family court In one of my cases, like with videos, the child is explaining what's happening and then, because the court didn't like my client, the child wasn't believed. That my client wasn't believed, because they were saying the same thing in the system.
Shawn:anytime that you have people making decisions whether it's judges or social workers, cops based on information they're getting from other people, there's always going to be defects in judgment.
Ilona:And relying on CWS records where there is bias.
Shawn:I can give you a good example. In fact, this is what we do at my place. When somebody brings a report, the first thing I tell them is look for the quotes. You find something in quotes. Go talk to that person that's being quoted. Nine times out of ten they did not say what they're being quoted as saying. It's a lie. And the court goes into great detail about the importance of quotes. It says a quote means it's verbatim what was said and it lends an air of authenticity, of credibility to the report if it's in quotes. What that means to me is it damn well better be true. And when I go talk to the third-party witness and they say no, I never said that, I can tell you that's like half of my judicial deception cases, literally. So it happens very frequently.
Ilona:But then that witness has to be believed and appear more credible than the social worker that Like a doctor.
Shawn:They misquote doctors all the time. I have a case like that right now. We're going to be in trial in August downtown in the federal district court. The doctors never said what the social worker said.
Mila:they said so it sounds like you're really trailblazing and really changing the system.
Shawn:I don't know that a lot's changed. I'm still in business.
Mila:I mean, but it sounds like there's been a lot of movement in the law in recent years that has made it more difficult to pull kids from parents without proof, or at least to lie.
Shawn:What I would say is it has made it easier to hold them accountable when they do it.
Ilona:Do they get fired? Like all these people that you sued, they weren't involved in some sort of you know nonsense.
Mila:Don't say they don't get fired. They never get fired. You're kidding.
Shawn:What happens? They'll either take a lateral move or they'll get promoted.
Mila:Sure Promoted.
Shawn:Promoted.
Mila:Okay.
Shawn:Usually into a training position where they're training other social workers.
Mila:No, no, don't tell me this. No, I don't believe that. Okay, we're opening a new practice area. I have a discovery.
Shawn:I can tell you what happens to them. They'll either get promoted or they'll make a lateral move away from contact with parents and children Because, remember, the liability for the county is generated in that interface between social worker and child or social worker and family. So if we just take the wrongdoer and we move them somewhere else so they're no longer in a maybe that's a hotline, so they're just taking phone calls- that would be demotion though Hotline or demotion no it's lateral move Same pay, Same pay, same job title same everything just they're not with kids.
Mila:So kind of a similar story. I do employment law and there are not a lot of law firms that take on governmental entities.
Shawn:Right.
Mila:And you need a lot of resources to do that. Currently we don't take on those cases, but we will eventually when our team is substantial enough. But I I have done a lot of those cases and they are the worst cases that people there act insane. If these things happened at a private company, there would be no second thought in my mind. I'd be like let's do these oh yeah, guys immediately, but they have so many immunities for civil suits. You know, there's first of all, there's the six-month period where you have to yeah you have to the government tort claims act.
Mila:So if the plaintiff doesn't come to me within six months of whatever happened, you lose the claims. You could still bring them under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, but those claims are limited. There's no constructive discharge claims against governmental entities. So if there's like a hostile work environment and someone has to resign because it's so bad, they can't be there. If it's against a private employer, they can still get their lost wages. It counts as if it's a termination. Can't bring that against a governmental entity. There are so many wild limitations in bringing those claims. And on top top of that it's the same story where they don't get fired they don't get fired, they get promoted or they get moved that's government.
Shawn:That's why we so screwed.
Mila:And then they go oh, we did an investigation and didn't find anything like won't produce the investigation report. It's insane, insane. Everything is a huge like hassle, a huge fight. You have to file 1,000 motions with the court and they have all the attorney's fees. They need to like pay out their attorneys because our taxes are paying for them and us, as plaintiffs, have to take it on contingency. I mean, granted, we may be able to recover attorney's fees at the end if it goes all the way through trial or you get a really great 998. But it's like a huge risk and you could lose. You don't know what's in those reports.
Ilona:Right. And then most clients cannot afford to advance the cost out of pocket and put like a $50,000 deposit to pay for depositions and filing fees and experts. So you know you have to be picky about what you're going to take.
Shawn:On these particular cases, the CPS cases. It's mostly poor people. You know most of my clients. They're not making $200,000, $300,000 a year. They can't afford a $5,000 a day depot. They can't even afford jury fees necessarily.
Ilona:To the point that Mila was making. Like government has certain standards as to whether you can sue them or not and what cause of actions you can bring, versus if you're a private employer in California, you are screwed. You can get sued for anything. You will get sued for anything, and I mean I know that now that you joined our firm, I can see that most businesses where there's a claim brought against them are incentivized to settle you know, I mean you know, you know it happened to us before and we fought it all the way through jury trial because it was how much did you spend?
Ilona:yeah, but like you have to stand up for yourself, like you know I I will not accept bullshit claims, like I just will not. So but point being is that for private businesses in California the government made all kinds of laws for you to get sued versus. Government has different standards for itself, although they invite that against private entities.
Shawn:Yeah, it's hard to be in business in California.
Mila:But in some states, did you know, like, for example, under the federal government, if you have under 15 employees, you cannot be sued for like sexual harassment, for example?
Ilona:But in California, yeah, you can. You can be sued for anything in California.
Shawn:Yeah, that's a problem with.
Ilona:California.
Shawn:Unfortunately, we're all here, right, that's where our businesses are, so we're kind of stuck.
Mila:We pay for the weather.
Shawn:Tell us about your craziest case, my craziest case or your saddest case?
Shawn:I don't know what's I can tell you they're all emotionally taxing, every one of them. You have to understand. Any time that somebody comes, whether it's a child I represent kids too um or a parent, whatever it is it is, they're at my office dealing with one of the most horrendous things that probably ever happened to them in their lives. Every one of those cases, you know it takes a bite out of you and it leaves something septic in its place and that sort of accumulates you never really get over.
Mila:How do you deal with that, like going home and leaving that at work.
Shawn:You don't. You don't, I mean that sticks with you. I can tell you that first case I did. In fact that was the whole reason I got into this area of work. After that verdict I went home when I was doing her case my kids were six and nine they were about the same age as her kids were when they were taken and I'd been gone for like six weeks as a week before trial, getting all our crap together and then five weeks of trial and I was just gone. I was living up there and I came home after the verdict and I just sat at my desk for a while and I still had this like thing kind of burning right here that I just thought you know I'm not doing this for the right reasons, I should just do something else. And I started looking at medical school.
Mila:I was like yeah, you know.
Shawn:I'm interested, I'm going to just fuck this. I'm going to go to medical school and blow this off. So I started, like you know, getting rid of all my clients. I had a very vibrant business and commercial practice going at that time. I was as a solo practitioner. I was had collected billings about 900 grand a year. So I was doing really well. And my wife, she works in the business with me and she sees the like money stopping the flow, like slowly choking off, and sees the clients getting offloaded. And she just came in one day and said, hey, what are we doing? And I just told her that I'm not going to do this anymore.
Ilona:What got you back into it, she?
Shawn:did. How she did Said hey, look well, you know. She said, hey, look well, you know. This is the deal. You found something that obviously had an impact on you and you're good at it, so just do it for one year I mean you're in it now, over 24 years later. Yeah, that's a long one year.
Ilona:There's something that drives you, what drives you. That has changed from that time when you were ready to throw in the towel.
Shawn:Because what is happening is just wrong. It's wrong and there's nothing that they can do about it. The clients can do about it. They're stuck. They're in a position where they literally have the government boot on their throat and there's nobody to help them.
Mila:Now you're passionate about it. Obviously, you know what you're doing. You're making a change. I mean, what's interesting to me is the first time you and I had talked on the phone on a Sunday morning while we were both taking our walks. We were talking about a case that I, you know, kind of wanted to pick your brain on, and you graciously responded to my email, and one of the things you told me, which I haven't really ever heard from an attorney is you said I want my kids to both be lawyers, because I think everyone should be lawyers.
Mila:And it's a great thing, and I have never heard that before. I mean, I feel the same way. I find so much purpose in doing what I do. I think Alona feels the same way, that's important work. But I think most attorneys are like I would never want my children to do this. You have to put your whole life into it. I want them to have an eight to five. But no, like when you love what you do and you find purpose in it, you really don't work a day of your life.
Shawn:Well, some of it's work. It's work, it's a lot of trial work.
Mila:Some of it's work, but when you see that light at the end of the tunnel and you know what you're doing it for, as opposed to just doing work.
Ilona:It's a completely different feeling right, I think you get sucked into it right, Like I know, when you start working on a client's case. Like you devote your life to their life to advance their purpose and to make their life better. Like you give up your life for theirs, yeah.
Shawn:Well, you have to. If you're going to do a good job, you have to do that and that's work. It definitely is work, and that's the part that is sometimes hard to get rid of. Once you get that ingrained with one of your clients and you carry whatever their story is and they're usually horrific stories you carry that still with you. It becomes part of you. You never really get rid of that.
Mila:I want to ask you something from, I guess, a business perspective and running a law firm, and I had to switch from, you know, defense side to plaintiff side and I think for employment cases similar to your cases, where every client that comes to me has a really great story and it's very hard to determine which cases to take because they all sound great from the get-go and sometimes it's a lot of investigation before figuring out what really happened.
Shawn:Yeah, sometimes you get it wrong.
Mila:How do you know if something could potentially be a case, because I'm sure this happens every day and I'm sure pretty much 90% of people who have their kids taken from them think that it's unfair or illegal. I'm sure they try to call you or other firms. So how do you determine which cases to take, whether or not there can be civil claims made?
Shawn:It's hard. I get maybe 200 calls a week and we get them from all over the country just because there's not a lot of people that do the work. And when you do get a good result usually a newspaper or television media, somebody will pick it up. So we don't do any advertising. We don't need to because the news does it for you. You can't help everybody. You can't take all the cases that are out there, whether they're good cases or not. So the first criteria is can this person communicate right? Are they able to communicate, to articulate in words what it is that happened to them, the who, what, where, why, when, how, right. If they can't do that, they're immediately you know. Next we can't deal with them, and the way that we test that is on the phone. We say okay, write an email 500 words or less. Tell us who, what, why, where, when and how.
Ilona:You know, now people will be using Chad GPT and that might not be a good test, I know that, and that's actually been a problem.
Shawn:I'll get some really well-written story. I'll call them up and they can't speak. It's like well, dude, I know you didn't write this.
Mila:I've had a few clients who only email via chat. Gpt Like every response to my email. I could just tell they yeah.
Shawn:I hate that. I actually hate it. You don't get to know the person very well or their mannerisms, the way they articulate their thoughts, or even whether or not they can express their thoughts really over email anymore.
Ilona:So what's the second layer?
Shawn:Second layer is where are you? Where are you? If I can't get to you in three hours, I'm really reluctant to take the case. That's not to say that I won't. I've taken a bunch of cases in Arizona. I've taken them all over California.
Ilona:Are you licensed in Arizona?
Shawn:Yeah, Over COVID. I took the bar in Arizona. I got Oregon. I got Washington. I'm thinking about Idaho. I want to try to get all the Ninth Circuit licenses. That's awesome. I love the energy I don't know that I'll still have energy. I did have a heart attack, so you never know.
Mila:I can't know that I'll still have energy. I did have a heart attack, so you never know. I can't tell. I could not tell when I met you or when I talked to you. Well, I've been working.
Shawn:I've been working on it, you know, trying to get better. The other criteria would be like was it a deception case? Was it a warrantless seizure case? What is it? What's the underlying liability triggering event? What is it? What's the underlying liability triggering event?
Shawn:If it's a kid, the criteria are going to be a little bit different. If you know, usually it's something happened in foster care where you beat and where you molested, something like that, or was the child killed. That happens too. So what happens in each of my cases where there's either a large settlement or a good verdict, there are policy changes that are made, there's training that's administered, or created and then administered, and that happens statewide, like I can tell you on the Duval case up in LA, when we got that verdict, we got a unanimous verdict. What happened after that verdict is they made a policy hey, we need to get warrants, we need to follow Ninth Circuit law and they started training on it. Same thing in Orange County, same thing in San Diego, riverside, san Bernardino. All the Southern California counties immediately implemented policies and training regarding the need to get warrants and how to do it.
Mila:So let me ask you this, just for our viewers, god forbid. There's a person in a situation where their children are taken from them by Child Protective Services, what do you do? What is the right approach to, I guess, increase your chances to get your child back? You know, separate and apart from any civil claims you can bring, practically, what do you do in that situation?
Shawn:Participate in your services. Okay, once you're in, once you have a case going, they have your kid, you're in the system. Right, you're going to court. Participate in your services. Always be polite, civil, prompt. Right With your social worker. If you're supposed to be somewhere, be there. Right With your social worker. If you're supposed to be somewhere, be there. If you have visitation, whatever that visitation is, make it work. Make it happen From their perspective. Visitation, participation in visitation, is the number one indicator of reunification.
Ilona:One of the cases that I mentioned earlier. When the verdict was finally given after all these years, the judge said you know the child's name, said I'm so sorry, the court system has failed you, and that was just like so emotional for me and our client and just felt so bad because, like this is what my client was trying to prove all these years and nobody believed her, nobody believed the child and finally we had a change in judicial officer who looked at it. It made a huge difference in this child's life. It made a huge difference that the truth was finally proven and like this apology from court to the child was so painful. It was truly owed to the child but sucks that they had to live through that.
Shawn:Well, and that happens like every day, that story that you just told. It's replayed every single day, maybe hundreds of times, all across the state in the juvenile dependency court.
Mila:So two questions what's the statute of limitations for the parents bringing claims?
Shawn:For everybody. It's going to be two years, but it's told for minors till they reach the age of majority.
Ilona:What causes of actions would a minor have, and against whom, if they were not removed from parents through juvenile court but were just placed with a wrong parent because of deception?
Shawn:If it's lies, then the child would potentially have a claim under the 14th Amendment for Judicial Deception and it'd be a 42 USC Section 1983 claim.
Ilona:And those are through state court or federal.
Shawn:There's concurrent jurisdictions. You can file either in state or federal. In San Diego County the county always will remove 100%, will remove it to federal court.
Ilona:You said that you previously were chasing trials. What do you love about doing trials? What ennui drives you to want to be in court?
Shawn:The best moment is when they come in and read a positive verdict.
Ilona:I love that. And I remember that feeling when your heart is beating.
Shawn:I cried with my clients on both of the civil rights cases. I've never cried in a commercial case. You just don't get so emotionally wrapped up. I've never cried in a commercial case. You just don't get so emotionally wrapped up. But with both of them it was like a cathartic moment. Not even a cathartic moment, it's like they're vindicated.
Mila:You take on these cases when the clients are going through the hardest times of their lives and they're so wronged and they have the closest thing to them children that they've produced removed from them and no one believes them, and you help them find their voices again. You help them get their power back with those verdicts.
Ilona:I think it really sucks that if only one out of 200 gets accepted, there's so many people that can't be helped that are victims of.
Shawn:What we've tried to do to address that and it doesn't work for everybody items of what we've tried to do to address that and it doesn't work for everybody is I put all of my work product out on the internet. So the motions we make, the motions we oppose, the stuff we win, the stuff we lose, discovery, you know, pattern discovery all of that is available for and there's a lot of pro se people out there that are capable, yeah so we put it all out there.
Shawn:They can use it, that's very generous of you the depositions our little caps and stems thing that's on my sweatshirt. We uh put that out on youtube. People can go watch. See you know how do you do a depo where can people find it?
Ilona:for those who don't have an attorney and want to take action on their own, where can they find?
Shawn:your material, caps and stems law, just do itaps and Stems Law.
Mila:Just do a.
Shawn:Google search Caps and Stems like the letter N Stems. The YouTube channel has all the deposition stuff and that's totally available for free.
Mila:Thank you so much for joining us Well. Thanks for having me, this is fun.
Ilona:And stay healthy. Hope that all your work is worth it.
Shawn:Yeah, I think I'm going to be okay actually.
Mila:I know you're going to be okay. Like you are a warrior, I see it in you, maybe. I absolutely know you're going to be okay. And you're not just going to be okay, you're going to be great.
Ilona:And that's it for today's episode. Huge thanks to Sean McMillan for sharing his incredible journey with us.
Mila:Definitely an inspiring conversation. If you're ready to keep grinding and making a difference, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review and stay tuned for more.
Ilona:Stay bold, stay beautiful and catch you next time. Oh, by the way, and handsome too. Catch us next time on the Glamorous Grind.
