Tag Archives: LA Community Action Network

Plaintiffs File Application for Order Holding City of Los Angeles in Contempt for Failure to Comply with Discovery Orders! ” a contempt order [is] necessary and proper to impress on these departments … that Court orders cannot be ignored”

California-centralMere moments ago new filings in the LACAN/LACW lawsuit against the City of LA and the Central City East Association hit the RSS feed of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and what a doozy! It seems that, despite their representations to the contrary in front of Federal Magistrate Judge Andrew Wistrich, the City of Los Angeles is not complying with the Court’s discovery orders. I haven’t had time to read any of this stuff yet, but it looks super hot so I wanted to get it up here as quickly as possible. First we have an ex parte application for an order holding the City of Los Angeles in contempt and seeking sanctions against them. The plaintiffs state:

Good cause exists for such a motion because despite two orders from this Court compelling the production of responsive documents, the City has failed to produce these documents or identify a date certain when all responsive documents will be produced. Without further intervention and sanctions against the City, the City will continue to ignore this Court’s order and the City’s discovery obligations. Plaintiffs will experience prejudice if the City continues to be permitted to ignore its obligations and this Court’s orders.

Well, that ought to put the fear of God into them. The application was supported by two declarations and a proposed order, to which you will find links after the break (along with another long selection from the application).
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Document Filed in Federal Court Yesterday Suggests that LA Community Action Network, LA Catholic Worker v. City of LA, Central City East Association Lawsuit May Settle Within Two Weeks

CCEA Secret Headquarters at 725 Crocker Street, downtown Los Angeles.
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.

Continue reading Document Filed in Federal Court Yesterday Suggests that LA Community Action Network, LA Catholic Worker v. City of LA, Central City East Association Lawsuit May Settle Within Two Weeks

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City of Los Angeles Ordered to Produce Documents, Promises to Pay Costs Incurred Due to Their Delays; Historic Core BID Documents Available

One of those hammers they seem to have in a lot of courtrooms.
One of those hammers they seem to have in a lot of courtrooms.
One week ago, on Friday, January 29, there was a telephonic conference before Federal Magistrate Judge Andrew Wistrich, who’s handling what’s turned out to be a grueling discovery process in the LA Community Action Network and LA Catholic Worker lawsuit against the City of LA and the Central City East Association concerning the illegal confiscation of the property of homeless people. The minutes and associated order just showed up in the Court’s RSS feed this afternoon, and you can grab a copy here. It sounds like a hot time was had by all, and the upshot is that:

Counsel for the City represented that the City will complete the LAPD production described during the telephonic conference by February 1, 2016 and the production of other agencies within 14 days. The City is directed to perform those promises. If it is necessary for plaintiffs to retake depositions because of delay or inadequacy in the City’s production of documents, the City will be responsible for all associated reasonable costs and attorneys fees. Counsel for the City assured the Court that the City would cooperate with any efforts by plaintiffs to seek adjustments to the case schedule to mitigate prejudice to plaintiffs resulting from delay or inadequacy in the City’s document production.

There’s no mention of the CCEA, so I suppose that either they’re complying with discovery finally or else they’re failing to comply so badly that it couldn’t be dealt with at this conference.

Read on for absolutely unrelated information about documents from Historic Core BID that just arrived today.
Continue reading City of Los Angeles Ordered to Produce Documents, Promises to Pay Costs Incurred Due to Their Delays; Historic Core BID Documents Available

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Video of Yesterday’s Central City East Association Meeting Now Available

Edward Camarillo at the January 26, 2016 meeting of the CCEA at 725 S. Crocker Street.
Edward Camarillo at the January 26, 2016 meeting of the CCEA at 725 S. Crocker Street.
I’m formally initiating coverage of the Central City East Association with some video of yesterday’s meeting of the Board of Directors at CCEA headquarters at 725 S. Crocker Street. You can find Part 1 and also Part 2. Note that the record is not complete because the Board went into closed session and I couldn’t stick around to see them reconvene. Part I consists entirely of CD14 representative Jose Huizar policy director Martin Schlageter talking about homeless issues in the BID’s territory and then, most interesting of all, taking questions from the Board members. The level of micromanagement is astonishing. We hope to write on some of the details later, but check some representative Q&A after the break. Part 2 is mostly taken up by a representative from the Runyon Group seeking CCEA support for entitlements for their ROW DTLA project (this project was formerly known as Alameda Square). Someone here will be writing on this soon in some detail.
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A Series of Unexpected Events Add Up to Discovery Delays in L.A. Catholic Worker v. City of L.A., Central City East Association Lawsuit Over Homeless Property Confiscations; Trial Now Scheduled for June 21, 2016

People have to sleep somewhere.
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.

Elizabeth Fitzgerald’s illness is only one of the reasons supporting plaintiffs’ request for an extension. The others all have to do with what’s turned out to be a lengthy, drawn-out, painful, inch-by-inch discovery process. It seems that any optimism over the pace of document production, both by the City and by the CCEA, was unwarranted, and I’m guessing it won’t even be complete by February 19, but we shall see, shan’t we? There are some more specific details after the break if you’re interested.
Continue reading A Series of Unexpected Events Add Up to Discovery Delays in L.A. Catholic Worker v. City of L.A., Central City East Association Lawsuit Over Homeless Property Confiscations; Trial Now Scheduled for June 21, 2016

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Discovery Hangups Seem to Have Been Settled in Today’s Hearing in LA Catholic Worker, LA CAN, v. City of L.A., Central City East Association

Round and around and around she goes...
Round and around and around she goes…
There was a hearing this morning in the lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and the Central City East Association, which is fairly historic since, for the first time in Los Angeles, if not anywhere, an attempt is being made to call a Business Improvement District to account for conspiring with the City to violate people’s rights and to prove, once and for all, that BIDs really are agents of the City, no matter what everyone involved says about it. Unfortunately various circumstances conspired to prevent me from attending this hearing (of plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery) in front of Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Wisterich. But the minutes (not the transcript) were posted on PACER this afternoon. After a conference in the courtroom, it seems that all the difficulties have been settled, and the City of L.A. will produce all the discovery material within 10 days. Read the whole thing after the break.
Continue reading Discovery Hangups Seem to Have Been Settled in Today’s Hearing in LA Catholic Worker, LA CAN, v. City of L.A., Central City East Association

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Quick Updates on Two Federal Lawsuits

Fruit cart on Santa Monica Blvd.
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 23rd that 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.

However, there’s also been some action in the LA Catholic Worker/LACAN v. City of LA/CCEA case. You may recall that the plaintiffs called for a hearing on January 11, 2016 over a motion to compel the City of Los Angeles to stop being so damned recalcitrant about handing over discovery material, and everybody seems super-tense about everything and mad at one another in a way that one doesn’t usually see with actual professional lawyers. Anyway, yesterday the plaintiffs filed a supplemental memorandum of law in support of their motion to compel, which makes for some interesting reading in the run-up to the hearing on the 11th.

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.
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LAPD Senior Systems Analyst’s Declaration in LACW Lawsuit Provides Further Insight into LAPD’s Secretive and Cavalier Attitude Towards Public Records, Legal Obligations

A house of secrets: LAPD headquarters at night.
A house of secrets: LAPD headquarters at night.
Papers newly filed in federal court reveal an astonishing unwillingness on the part of the City of Los Angeles and the LAPD to release public records and other documents to the plaintiffs in the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and LA Community Action Network lawsuit. A few days ago I wrote about these filings in general and today I’m going to discuss some specific details about the City’s claims regarding the LAPD’s email system and how, they say, it’s preventing them from complying with the discovery process in the suit. This topic is, of necessity, mostly inside baseball both legally and technologically, and maybe you want to skip it if that bores you. If so, the TL;DR is that the LAPD contradicts itself constantly about the availability of its emails for legal discovery, and the LAPD only looks even more furtive when facts related to Public Records Act requests are considered. All four of the documents I discuss below were extracted from Part 2 of Catherine Sweetser’s declaration, filed with the court on December 8, 2015.
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Hearing on Motion to Compel City of Los Angeles to Hand Over Discovery Documents to Plaintiffs LA Catholic Worker and LA Community Action Network Set for January 11, 2016

The Roybal federal building, location of Judge Philip Gutierrez's courtroom.
The Roybal federal building, location of Judge Philip Gutierrez’s courtroom.
This is a very quick note to announce that attorneys for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles yesterday filed notice that they’ll be making a motion on January 11, 2016 at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 690 in the Roybal Building downtown to compel the City of Los Angeles to hand over a bunch of discovery material. I reported briefly on this subject yesterday, but wasn’t aware for sure at that time that they were actually going to court over the city’s recalcitrance. I’ll be writing much more about this later, but I wanted to drop this on you in a timely manner so you can arrange your calendars.
Continue reading Hearing on Motion to Compel City of Los Angeles to Hand Over Discovery Documents to Plaintiffs LA Catholic Worker and LA Community Action Network Set for January 11, 2016

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Tempers Flare in Federal Court as Voluminous New Filings in LACW, LACAN v. City of LA, CCEA Case Reveal Inside Story of Lengthy, Painful Discovery Process

The discovery process in all its glory.
The discovery process in all its glory.
On Tuesday (December 8) a bunch of new documents related to the discovery process were filed in the ongoing 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. I don’t have the competence to comment usefully on most of this stuff, but, interestingly, there’s a lot of discussion of how the city of Los Angeles deals with public records. This, I do know something about.

Anyway, you can find all of the new pleadings here in the subdirectory, dated December 8, 2015. First there is a brief motion to compel discovery from the city of LA, necessary because getting camels through the eyes of needles is easier than getting documents out of the city of Los Angeles. This was foreshadowed by something I missed in the the joint stipulation, discussed in my post the other day:

The City and Plaintiffs have met extensively regarding Defendants’ responses to Plaintiffs’ Requests for Production and will likely require Court intervention to resolve their disagreement

It seems that, however, as I recently reported, the CCEA at least is complying with discovery requests. There’s a little bit more detail after the break, including some sample prose laden with negative feelings in a manner not so commonly found in pleadings. I hope to write on a number of specific items later today or quite soon, especially the controversy over production of emails, an area where the city of Los Angeles is infamous for flouting the law.
Continue reading Tempers Flare in Federal Court as Voluminous New Filings in LACW, LACAN v. City of LA, CCEA Case Reveal Inside Story of Lengthy, Painful Discovery Process

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