Tag Archives: Leshon Frierson

City Files Response to Application for Contempt and Sanctions Stating Essentially that they did Hand Over Documents, they are Handing Over Documents, and they Will Hand Over More Documents and the Computer Ate their Homework so it’s not their Fault

California-centralOn Wednesday the plaintiffs in the LACW/LACAN lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and the Central City East Association filed materials in support of their application for contempt and sanctions against the City of Los Angeles, who, they claim, is not producing discovery materials according to the already-much-extended schedule. Tonight the City filed two documents in response: A declaration of Ronald Whitaker, who’s the Assistant City Attorney handling the case for the City, and a declaration of LeShon Frierson, who is a senior system analyst with the LAPD, and is the Person Most Knowledgeable (PMK) regarding the LAPD’s email systems.
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Documents Filed Just Now in LA CAN/LACW Suit Against City of LA, CCEA, Ask for Award of $46,568 in Costs and Entrance of Long List of Damning Facts as True

California-centralI reported a couple weeks ago about the hearing on plaintiffs’ motion to hold the City of LA in contempt for failing to produce discovery documents. The order scheduling the hearing also required the plaintiffs to submit pleadings today outlining the status of the discovery requests and also detailing how much in fees and costs they were asking for. Those documents were filed tonight around 6:30 p.m. and I have them for you here:

Shayla Myers’s declaration has multiple goodies in the exhibits, including a full transcript of the deposition of LAPD Information Technologist LeShon Frierson, in which he revealed for the first time in February that the LAPD does in fact use an email archiving product called GWAVA Retain, which, notably, allows keyword searches across mailboxes, something which the City had wrongly denied was possible. I speculated about this issue in December 2015, so it was a treat to find out that they had this capability, and it’s a treat now to read the actual words of LeShon Frierson describing the software and how it’s used. There are beaucoup emails in there too between Myers and Ronald Whitaker, who’s representing the City. It’s fascinating if, like me, you just can’t resist reading other people’s correspondence.
Continue reading Documents Filed Just Now in LA CAN/LACW Suit Against City of LA, CCEA, Ask for Award of $46,568 in Costs and Entrance of Long List of Damning Facts as True

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Documents Filed Mere Moments Ago in LACW/LACAN v. CCEA/City of LA Case Quite Plausibly Accuse City of Los Angeles of Inaccurate Representations Regarding LAPD Discovery Capabilities

retain-unified-circleLast week attorneys for Los Angeles Catholic Worker and LA Community Action Network filed an application requesting that the City be held in contempt for its misfeasance in what has turned out to be painful, drawn-out discovery process. This morning, mere minutes ago, plaintiffs’ attorney Shayla Myers filed a supplemental declaration in support (along with an exhibit) in which she states:

I am producing this supplemental declaration to update the Court about facts which Plaintiffs have discovered since the ex parte motion to hold the City in contempt was filed. In particular, Plaintiffs have discovered that certain representations by the City of Los Angeles appear to be inaccurate. While the City of Los Angeles has maintained since July 2015 that it cannot do a global search of emails in the possession of the LAPD, Plaintiffs discovered at a deposition of the Person Most Knowledgeable on behalf of the City on February 22, 2016 that the LAPD employs e-discovery software that allows the LAPD to search all emails sent and received by LAPD officers since March 2013, that the software is designed to facilitate global keyword searches, and that when the LAPD has done such a search in the past, it was completed within a week.

Continue reading Documents Filed Mere Moments Ago in LACW/LACAN v. CCEA/City of LA Case Quite Plausibly Accuse City of Los Angeles of Inaccurate Representations Regarding LAPD Discovery Capabilities

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Late Night Declaration Filed by Ronald Whitaker Opposing Plaintiffs’ Application for Contempt and Sanctions in LACAN/LACW v. City, CCEA

California-centralEarlier today the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the homeless property case, Shayla Myers and Catherine Sweetser, filed a massive application for contempt and sanctions against defendant City of Los Angeles due to their (alleged but totally plausible) recalcitrance in complying with the discovery process. Just now Deputy City Attorney Ronald Whitaker filed a declaration in opposition to this application. There’s nothing that new here, although it’s interesting to see that the City is sticking to its largely discredited claim that

in order to search emails, they need the email addresses of each individual LAPD officer. With the help of our investigator, we have tried to identify each of the individual police officers, of which there are over 400, assigned to the Central Division within the relevant timeframe. The LAPD’s IT department requires us to manually match up each officer name with their serial number, as that is how officers are identified in their email addresses. That process is and has been ongoing.

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

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