Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney Julie Raffish.Why is the City of LA fighting this lawsuit? What a freaking waste of time and money. On January 26, 2016, the City of Los Angeles filed its answer to the petition filed by Colleen Flynn and Carol Sobel on behalf of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and the National Lawyers Guild Los Angeles seeking a writ of mandate ordering the LAPD to stop messing about and turn over the goddamned goodies. (You can find a collection of filings from this suit here). Paragraphs 1 through 9 of the initial complaint are background, and Julie Raffish, who wrote the answer, gets to indulge her evident taste for dark sarcasm in her responses, e.g. at paragraph 4 denying that the NLG is a non-profit legal association.
She also displays a wry, deadpan humor. For instance, in paragraph 3 the plaintiffs assert that the Coalition to Stop LAPD Spying “empowers its members to work collectively against police repression and to dismantle domestic spying operations” and that therefore the Coalition has an interest in the LAPD’s adhering to the Public Records Act. Julie Raffish has the City admitting that the Coalition is interested, but claiming that, as to the rest of the allegations they “lack sufficient information and knowledge to form a belief as to the truth…” of, I guess, whether there are “police repression” and “domestic spying operations” to be dismantled and worked collectively against. Dry as a bone, is Julie Raffish, and isn’t lawyerly humor fun! But the public records stuff is where it gets really interesting: Continue reading City of Los Angeles Files Answer to Stop LAPD Spying Coalition Public Records Act Petition: Admits Guilt, Expects Reward→
People have to sleep somewhere.Yesterday, Judge Philip Gutierrez issued an order extending the discovery deadline in L.A. Catholic Worker et al. v. City of L.A. et al. until February 19 and moving the trial date to June 21, 2016. This order capped off a week full of filings. First, on Monday, January 11, presumably after the hearing on plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery, Ronald Whitaker, who supervises the Business and Complex Litigation section of the L.A. City Attorney’s office, filed a notice of appearance in the case. He’s (probably) the boss of Deputy City Attorney Elizabeth Fitzgerald, who has been defending the case for the City.
I didn’t see the significance of this at the time, but it was clarified on Wednesday, when the plaintiffs filed an ex parte (that is, without the on-the-record participation of the defendants) application to amend the scheduling order to continue dates by 30 days. This is an unusual procedure and it seems it must be justified by the existence of exigent circumstances. In this case the first of these is that on Monday the 11th, after the discovery hearing, Elizabeth Fitzgerald had a medical emergency and will be on leave at least through the end of January. At the very least this requires the rescheduling of a bunch of depositions, and is probably why Ronald Whitaker joined the case. Note also that the plaintiffs asked for and received the City of LA’s support of the application and that the CCEA did not oppose it.
April 2015 Death by Cop march in Westlake. It’s not what this lawsuit is about, but it’s a good picture.Yesterday night the Times reported that a suit was filed in federal court on January 14, 2016, on behalf of people, including NLG-LA lawyers there to observe, whose rights were violated by the LAPD in November 2014 during a protest against a Missouri grand jury’s failure to indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown. For whatever reason, newspaper articles like this never link to the court filings, which I, and maybe even you, find fascinating. On the face of it this case has nothing to do with BIDs, although it’s conceivable that a connection will develop,1 but I’m going to collect filings here anyway since I’m going to read them myself, so I might as well distribute them. I don’t plan to write much on them, but who knows? I set up a page to display them. It’s also reachable through the menu structure above. Right now the initial complaint is there and is well worth your time. There are some selections after the break: Continue reading Documents Available as City of L.A., Charlie Beck Sued by Michael Brown Protesters, National Lawyers Guild, over November 2014 Rights Violations→
Fruit cart on Santa Monica Blvd.There’s not much hard news here, but there’s something. First of all the street vending lawsuit. Last week both the Fashion District BID and the City of LA asked the court for extra time to respond to the plaintiffs’ discovery requests. Because the City asked for fewer than 30 days the request is automatically granted, but the FDBID asked for more than 30 days, and so needed an order from Judge O’Connell. On the 23rdthat order was filed by the judge, who granted the FDBID an extension until January 25, 2016. Note that there’s nothing especially interesting in this document.
TL;DR is that the plaintiffs accuse the City of LA of abusing the rule requiring parties to “meet and confer” over discovery matters by providing irrelevant material and so on in order to run out the clock on discovery. I’m convinced by their arguments, but obviously I’m biased. There’s also a hyper-meta discussion on whether the fact that an attorney directs the discovery process makes the documents used to coordinate the process into privileged attorney work-product. I’m sure I missed all the fine points, but I’m definitely convinced. These people will claim privilege for anything. Shameless. Find curated selections from the pleading after the break. Continue reading Quick Updates on Two Federal Lawsuits→
Carol Sobel, lead plaintiffs’ attorney in Lavan v. City of Los AngelesThe Lavan case is kind of off our beat here since it’s not directly linked to BIDs, but I haven’t found any discussion in the news of pleadings filed with the court in early December, so I thought I’d upload them and note their existence here as a public service. (I don’t want to go into the details of the case, but if you’re not already familiar with them, the Argonaut has a reasonable if westside-whiny outline of the situation). On December 2, 2015, the parties to the case filed a Joint Notice of Tentative Settlement, asking Judge Philip Gutierrez to vacate the trial date due to an impending settlement:
As the Court is aware, the parties participated in a settlement conference before Magistrate Judge Woehrle on November 24, 2015, at which time they reached a tentative settlement of the remaining issues in this action. The settlement requires a four-step approval procedure by the City. That process is anticipated to take at least three months, if not longer, particularly in light of the upcoming holidays resulting in the cancellation of several meeting dates for City officials. If the settlement is approved by the City Council, the third step in the process, it then goes to the Mayor, who has 10 days to act on the proposal. The parties have agreed that, if approved by the City, the settlement will be paid at the beginning of the next fiscal year, which is July 1, 2016.
