Attorneys

Filling a job that has been vacant for three years, Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday narrowly approved the hiring of an attorney to investigate the cases of children who die while in the county's care. To take the post, Rosemarie Belda will leave the Office of County Counsel, where she has represented the Department of Children and Family Services, the agency that will now be a central target of her reports. In addition to investigating child deaths, she has been asked to recommend reforms that might prevent future fatalities.

Roman Polanski's attorneys helped provoke his arrest by complaining to an appellate court this summer that Los Angeles County prosecutors had made no real effort to capture the filmmaker in his three decades as a fugitive, two law enforcement sources familiar with the case told The Times. The accusation that the Los Angeles County district attorney's office was not serious about extraditing Polanski to facing sentencing in a child sex case he fled in 1978 was a minor point in two lengthy July court filings by the director's attorneys.

Reporting from Culiacan, Mexico, and Monterrey, Mexico -- Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, once hailed here as "the Bulletproof Lawyer," could outrun the bullets no longer. Villanueva, one of Mexico's most controversial attorneys, was shopping in Monterrey in August when hooded gunmen with automatic weapons tracked her down amid stalls of handbags, perfume and videos, then pumped more than a dozen shots into her body. The killers delivered a final shot to the head before fleeing the covered market, busy with shoppers at midday on a Sunday.

For days, retired Army Col. John Galligan tracked each wrenching update about the shooting rampage at Ft. Hood, the place where he had spent the final months of a 30-year military career. As a former military lawyer, he ran through his mind the legal issues in a possible case against Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the man accused in the shootings, including whether Hasan could get a fair trial there. Then, the phone rang at his limestone office on this town's main street: Hasan's family wanted to hire him. Within 24 hours, Galligan was introducing himself to the soldier whose picture he had seen in newspapers and on national television.

Re "When the witness is suspect," editorial, March 30 Your editorial was right on target. Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Jackson's assessment of "pay-to-say" -- that attorneys only seek out expert witnesses who will support their cases -- is borne out in our courts on a daily basis. My personal experience as an expert witness began in the 1960s. Attorneys who retained me did not always prevail, but I never testified for any attorney where evidence and facts did not favor his client. Attorneys lacking these ingredients had to be satisfied with my input as a consultant on how to question adversarial experts.

A Pelican Bay State Prison inmate was convicted of attempted murder for trying to stab his attorney in court. A Del Norte County jury this week found Phillip Evans guilty of trying to stab attorney Leroy Davies with a prison-made weapon. The Feb. 22 attack failed when a pen in Davies' pocket deflected the weapon. Davies was not injured.

Legal aid lawyer Louis Rafti was leading a group of law students on a tour of skid row when he saw it in the corner of a homeless shelter. The cot. The very one, he could swear it was, that he had slept on during his last night on the row a few years before. Rafti froze. He didn't say a word, but a sense of wonder overwhelmed him. Wonder that he did not have a crack pipe in his hand. Or a needle in his arm. That he had a home, a job, a life.

A Palm Springs man who prosecutors say was paid to act as a plaintiff in dozens of class-action lawsuits was sentenced Monday to six months' home detention and two years' probation and will pay more than $2 million. U.S. District Judge John F. Walter rejected pleas from attorneys for Seymour Lazar that the ailing 80-year-old be sentenced to probation only, saying that Lazar, a retired lawyer, showed "no respect" for the judicial system.

A lawsuit filed in federal court last week alleges that a company that purports to offer legal services to low-income people nationwide instead preys on them. According to the suit filed in Denver, the victims had asked for assistance from Legal Aid National Services of Aurora, Colo. -- or one of a dozen related entities -- thinking that they were dealing with a legitimate provider of services for low-income persons.

Civil rights groups filed a petition in federal court Thursday seeking a restraining order against immigration officials who allegedly blocked workers detained in a raid at a Van Nuys manufacturing plant from consulting with their attorneys.