Recall that in April, Judge Otero issued an injunction in relation to the confiscation of the property of homeless people on Skid Row. The City of Los Angeles, meanwhile, professes not to understand the injunction and has filed a motion for clarification of the order. A scheduled hearing on this motion was postponed once and today all parties filed a joint stipulation asking for another postponement and the Judge filed an order granting the request. The hearing is now scheduled for Monday, August 15, at 10 a.m. in Otero’s courtroom downtown.1 The stated reason is that productive mediation in front of Magistrate Judge Carla Woehrle is both fruitful and ongoing.
Recall that last month Judge Otero issued a preliminary injunction forbidding the City of Los Angeles from confiscating the property of homeless people in and/or around Skid Row without following required due process. Today the City filed a motion asking Otero to clarify what he meant. They also filed a proposed order for the Judge’s signature which, I imagine, is mostly of value here as it shows what the City wishes the injunction means.
CCEA Secret Headquarters at 725 Crocker Street, downtown Los Angeles.A document filed in Federal Court yesterday suggests that the LACAN/LACW lawsuit against the City of LA and the CCEA over the illegal confiscation of the property of the homeless may be within a scant two weeks of a settlement. The document is a joint stipulation asking that discovery be delayed (but not the trial date; if you’ve been following the case you’ll recall that last November the parties asked Judge Gutierrez to delay the trial, but he refused. I suppose they’re not making the same mistake again). In any case, the pleading states that:
The settlement conferences with [Magistrate] Judge [Carla M.] Woehrle have been very productive, and based on the most recent settlement conference [on February 2, 2016] and subsequent discussions, parties are hopeful that further settlement discussions over the next two weeks may lead to resolution of many if not all matters in this litigation. The City of Los Angeles in particular has indicated that it needs additional time to consider Plaintiffs’ proposal but that it will be responding shortly.
Ammon Hennacy in Santa Monica in July, 1966.NOTE: Clearly I can’t read. This is wrong. The joint proposed motion filed by the parties was DENIED by the court. Trial is still set for April 26, 2016.
According to pleadings filed on November 30, 2015, settlement talks in the lawsuit filed by Los Angeles Catholic Worker and the Los Angeles Community Action Network against the City of Los Angeles and the Central City East Association, which runs the Downtown Industrial District BID, are proceeding well. The parties filed a joint stipulation stating that they
…continue to engage in settlement negotiations and are actively exchanging proposals. The parties believe future talks will continue to be productive and are amenable to participating in further sessions with Judge Woehrle [the magistrate judge in the case]. Because these early settlement conferences indicated a potential for resolution of this case, and because all parties are non-profits and government entities, the parties have attempted to delay incurring significant litigation expenses from discovery and motion practice while the parties have been actively engaged in settlement negotiations.
(See Gale Holland’s excellent story in the Times on Mitchell v. LA as well as our other stories on the subject for the background to this post).
