Tag Archives: Attorney Client Privilege Exemption

CD13, Los Angeles City Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Confidential Attorney Client Conversation Between Deputy City Attorneys Mike Dundas and Strefan Fauble And CD13 Staffer Dan Halden Reveal That The City Denies Requests As Burdensome Even Though They Know A Judge Wouldn’t Buy Such An Exemption Claim — That They Consider Whether A Requester Will Actually Sue Them When Deciding Whether Or Not To Deny As Burdensome — Which Is Intrinsically A Violation Of The CPRA — And That Mike Dundas Understands The CPRA Far Better Than Strefan Fauble

March 14, 2021 Mike Leave a comment

This post is about a confidential email conversation between Deputy City Attorneys Mike Dundas and Strefan Fauble and CD13 staffer Dan Halden about a CPRA request of mine. If you’d like to read the email without reading my nonsensical rantings about it you can find it here on Archive.Org.

If you spend any time at all asking the City of Los Angeles for copies of public records you’ll have realized that compliance with the Public Records Act is not a high priority of theirs. They violate it constantly, in small ways and large, intentionally and out of sheer careless indifference. They violate it because they can afford to pay out any number of settlements and most people won’t sue them. They violate it even though compliance with the CPRA is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution of California.¹

And now, although I’ve long suspected it to be true, I have proof that the City Attorney’s office actually advises them to decide whether to violate it based on whether or not they think the requester will sue them which, as Strefan Fauble so succinctly puts it in a top-secret confidential April 2019 email conversation, “would involve a lot more work.”

But it takes resources to sue them, so effectively this policy favors rich requesters and corporate requesters, even though the Constitution² guarantees access to every person, which clearly means equal access. It’s surely no coincidence that rich people and corporations are much, much less likely to be critical of the City. This story begins with a request I sent to Dan Halden on March 12, 2019. I asked Halden for:
Continue reading Confidential Attorney Client Conversation Between Deputy City Attorneys Mike Dundas and Strefan Fauble And CD13 Staffer Dan Halden Reveal That The City Denies Requests As Burdensome Even Though They Know A Judge Wouldn’t Buy Such An Exemption Claim — That They Consider Whether A Requester Will Actually Sue Them When Deciding Whether Or Not To Deny As Burdensome — Which Is Intrinsically A Violation Of The CPRA — And That Mike Dundas Understands The CPRA Far Better Than Strefan Fauble →

Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Los Angeles Business Improvement Districts Held A Seminar In July 2018 To Talk About How To Deal With My Requests For Public Records — The World’s Angriest CPRA Lawyer Carol Humiston Was The Main Speaker — Gave A Bunch Of Bogus Feel-Good Advice That Evidently Didn’t Include Just Complying With The Law Since None Of Her Clients Will Do That — BIDs Reveal That They Want The Law Changed In Their Favor — May Hire A Lobbyist To Facilitate This — Miguel Santiago Is Helping Them Out Yet Again

February 7, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Around the turn of the century, thanks to brave and successful litigation by property owner Aaron Epstein against the demonic forces of Ms. Kerry Morrison and her Hollywood Entertainment District BID, it is the supreme law of California that business improvement districts are subject to the California Public Records Act. It is this fact that, of course, has made possible the very existence of this blog.

Without actual copies of actual records, what credibility would we have? We would we be but yet another gang of basement-dwelling neckbeards ranting about injustice on the internet?³ And the fact that their BIDs are subject to the CPRA drives the BIDdies absolutely wild with rage.

They just cannot understand how it is that every law on the books has been carefully crafted to allow zillionaires and their minions to curbstomp anyone who interferes with their interests, and yet this law seems to work against zillionairity by e.g. exposing them to public mockery and contempt.⁴ They just cannot believe that the law says what it says. What, they seem to be muttering, have we been paying all those damn legislators for?

And so they have consistently ganged up to fight any improvement⁵ to the CPRA and to develop and utilize methods for evading their CPRA-imposed duties. We saw this recently when they hired a lobbyist to thwart, gut, and render meaningless AB-1479, Rob Bonta’s modest 2017 proposal to strengthen the CPRA by making it possible to actually sanction violations, a sinister project in which they were aided by the sleazy backroom machinations of would-be Huizar successor Miguel Santiago.

And newly obtained evidence shows that in July 2018 the BIDdies continued these CPRA-thwarting efforts by holding a seminar on my CPRA requests, convened by Rena Leddy, executive director of the Fashion District BID, currently being sued for egregious CPRA violations, keynoted by Carol Humiston, the world’s angriest CPRA lawyer, and attended by circa 35 BIDdie representatives, many of whom are also being sued for egregious CPRA violations, all there to discuss me and this blog and how not to follow the law!

In particular, the records, obtained, ironically, via the CPRA, include a powerpoint presentation given by Humiston and a set of notes taken by one of the attendees.⁶ The powerpoint thing is tedious nonsense, although it gains some interest from the fact that the South Park BID wouldn’t give me a copy, claiming attorney/client privilege, a stance that’s hard to maintain in the face of the fact that Humiston presented it to 35 people, many of them not her clients. Fortunately not every BID is so moronically mulish.

However, the set of notes is pure gold! It outlines Humiston’s strategies for delaying or obstructing access to records, including suggested bogus fees to impose, when to delete emails to thwart requesters, and so on. Most crucially, though, it reveals that the BIDs have at least discussed changing state law to relieve them from their CPRA duties and hiring a lobbyist to help them do so.

They have also, it states, talked to a legislator, who is obviously that nefarious little twerp Miguel Santiago, who has amplified their wickedness before. This is an essential glimpse into the red, bloody, seething ids of the zillionaire minions who run this City’s BIDs. Turn the page for excerpts, commentary, and finally a transcription of the entire document.
Continue reading Los Angeles Business Improvement Districts Held A Seminar In July 2018 To Talk About How To Deal With My Requests For Public Records — The World’s Angriest CPRA Lawyer Carol Humiston Was The Main Speaker — Gave A Bunch Of Bogus Feel-Good Advice That Evidently Didn’t Include Just Complying With The Law Since None Of Her Clients Will Do That — BIDs Reveal That They Want The Law Changed In Their Favor — May Hire A Lobbyist To Facilitate This — Miguel Santiago Is Helping Them Out Yet Again →

Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

An Unforced Error By Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs Provides Unique Insight Into The Thoroughly Cynical, Thoroughly Bogus Nature Of BIDs’ Use Of The Deliberative Process Exemption To The California Public Records Act — They Even Used It In One Case To Cover Up A Blatant Brown Act Violation

February 8, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

One of the biggest flaws in California’s Public Records Act is that the various local agencies that constitute our government are trusted to search their own records, decide without oversight what’s responsive to requests and, worst of all, decide what’s exempt from production. My general feeling about BIDs and record searches is that they purposely don’t find everything, about their exemption claims that they’re mostly lying.

Unfortunately, without a lawsuit, it’s not realistically possible to get a look at records for which they’ve claimed exemptions.⁷ Hence it’s not usually possible to check how closely this feeling corresponds to reality. However, due to an interesting confluence of events, I recently obtained a number of emails between various people at the Hollywood Media District BID for which their lawyer, Jeffrey Charles Briggs,⁸ had claimed exemptions, thus making it possible to compare his claims with the actual records. Unsurprisingly the exemption claims turned out to be $99\frac{44}{100}\%$ pure and unadulterated nonsense. You can find the emails and some analysis after the break, but first I’m going to ramble on a little about some tangentially related issues.

Like many policies, this default assumption of honesty on the part of local agencies no doubt works when it works, but when it comes to the BIDs of Los Angeles, who are staffed, for the most part, with the most unscrupulous bunch of pusillanimous chiselers ever to engorge their bloated reeking tummies at the public piggie trough, it doesn’t work at all.⁹ They lie, they confabulate, they delude themselves and others, and generally display utter and overweening contempt for the rule of law.¹⁰

And nowhere does their misbehavior reach a more fevered pitch than in the use of the so-called “deliberative process” exemption to the CPRA. In short, this is an exemption that courts have built up out of the “catch-all” exemption to CPRA, found at §6255(a), which says:
Continue reading An Unforced Error By Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs Provides Unique Insight Into The Thoroughly Cynical, Thoroughly Bogus Nature Of BIDs’ Use Of The Deliberative Process Exemption To The California Public Records Act — They Even Used It In One Case To Cover Up A Blatant Brown Act Violation →

Cory Spencer v. Lunada Bay Boys

Lunada Bay Boys Defendant Sang Lee Ordered To Produce Everything On His Damn Phone Except His Home Address, Emails From His Lawyer, And His Porn Collection, And To Do It By 2 P.M. Today

July 25, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

For background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on this lawsuit. Also see here to download all pleadings in this case.

You may recall that, a few days ago, the plaintiffs in the Lunada Bay Boys case filed a bunch of paperwork having to do with defendant Sang Lee’s uncooperative attitude towards his discovery obligations, leading to the Honorable Rozella Oliver, magistrate judge in the case, issuing a minute order telling Sang Lee to get moving and hand over the goods.

Well, they had another telephone conference about Sang Lee’s phone this morning, and Oliver, having inspected everything on the phone in secret, issued an order compelling Sang Lee to hand over everything on the phone except “sensitive personal photographs, Defendant Lee’s residential address, and communications between Defendant Lee and his attorneys.” (As always, there’s a transcription of the order after the break).¹¹ Continue reading Lunada Bay Boys Defendant Sang Lee Ordered To Produce Everything On His Damn Phone Except His Home Address, Emails From His Lawyer, And His Porn Collection, And To Do It By 2 P.M. Today →

Central City East Association, Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

The LA CAN & Catholic Worker Lawsuit Has Cost The Central City East Association At Least $115,000 In Legal Fees And Costs (And How It Took Me Two Months Of Hardcore CPRAfaction To Discover This Fact)

May 30, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Around these parts we refer to the California Public Records Act as CPRA, pronounced SIP-rah. The methodologies and practicalities of using CPRA are known as CPRAfaction, pronounced SIP-rah-faction.

You may recall that in March, the Central City East Association settled the momentous lawsuit brought against it by the Los Angeles Community Action Network and LA Catholic Worker.¹² This was mere months after beloved Los Angeles gadfly Eric Preven and the incomparable ACLU of Southern California won a momentous decision in the California Supreme Court, which ruled essentially that once a legal case was finished the legal privilege exemption to CPRA¹³ no longer applied. No coincidences around here! So I fired off an email to Estela Lopez as follows:

Good afternoon, Estela, and happy Palm Sunday.

And congratulations on settling that 2014 lawsuit, namely LACW et al. v. Downtown Industrial District BID et al. (2:14-cv-07344-PSG-AJW). I would like to look at copies of all bills from all lawyers who worked for the CCEA on this case.

For the sake of efficiency, and in case you’re not already aware aware of this, here’s a link to an LA Times story on the recent Supreme Court decision declaring that once a case is resolved the bills become public records:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-court-legal-bills-20161229-story.html

As you can imagine, there was a lot of back-and-forth, with her mostly refusing to hand over the legal bills, until this afternoon, when she did hand them over. The full story of that, with bunches of emails and also a reasonable amount of CPRA nerdview, can be found after the break if you’re interested.

But here are the actual bills to CCEA from their lawyers, Hill, Farrer, & Burrill. I spent a little time adding up the totals and their total legal bills, costs and fees, seem to have come to $89,782.54 over the last three years. Add this to the $25,000 they agreed to pay the plaintiffs in the settlement agreement and their whole bill comes to $114,782.54. This is over slightly less than three years, and the BID’s annual budget is roughly $2,000,000, so it’s relatively not that much.

According to Estela Lopez in 2015 there are more than 2000 homeless human beings living in the CCEA’s territory. Thus this lawsuit cost them a little more than $57 per potential harassment victim. I’m sure this seems cheap at the price. Anyway, that’s the substantive information. Turn the page for the story of how I got my hands on it!
Continue reading The LA CAN & Catholic Worker Lawsuit Has Cost The Central City East Association At Least $115,000 In Legal Fees And Costs (And How It Took Me Two Months Of Hardcore CPRAfaction To Discover This Fact) →