Conflict Of Interest

In a virtually unprecedented slap at a higher court, a federal district judge in Little Rock, Ark., has accused the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals of basing a decision in a pending Whitewater criminal case on "hearsay, hearsay on hearsay and triple hearsay contained in media reports." Judge Bill Wilson said that the appellate court had acted unfairly in removing another district judge, Henry Woods, from a still-pending case against former Gov.

Some Southern California probate judges have been waging a quiet campaign to stamp out abuses by a small number of professional conservators--entrepreneurs who control the lives and estates of mostly elderly people unable to take care of their personal and financial affairs.

The wife of school board member Robert W. Balen has resigned her teaching position because her employment by Santa Ana Unified School District violated a state law, officials revealed at a meeting late Tuesday. After an inquiry by district Supt. Al Mijares, the Orange County Department of Education declared that Patricia Balen's employment was illegal under state conflict-of-interest codes. On Aug.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has agreed to pay a $3,000 fine for violating the state's conflict of interest law, his attorney said Wednesday. In a proposed settlement reached last week with the staff of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, Riordan acknowledged that he had a conflict of interest when he twice acted on matters involving a tenant in the Fine Arts Building, a historic office complex in downtown Los Angeles.

Mayor Richard Riordan on Wednesday ordered the head of the Los Angeles Convention Center to immediately quit his job as a consultant to Hawaii's Convention Center Authority, saying the outside employment had gone far beyond the scope of what the mayor's office intended when it approved the arrangement in 1994. "I hereby disapprove of your contract for outside employment," Riordan wrote in a letter faxed to Dick Walsh late Wednesday.

The director of the struggling Los Angeles Convention Center has been moonlighting as a consultant to help build a facility in Hawaii that could siphon away some of Los Angeles' convention trade. Dick Walsh, who earns $131,607 a year from his post as the center's general manager, has collected nearly $80,000 from the Hawaii Convention Center Authority over the past two years, according to documents obtained by The Times.

A federal judge has disqualified attorney Allan H. Stokke from representing Dr. Sergio C. Stone, one of three doctors at the center of the UC Irvine fertility clinic scandal, because of a potential conflict of interest. Stokke was ordered removed from the case in a two-page order signed by U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor on Tuesday. The order had been requested by federal prosecutors, who pointed out that Stokke's firm also represented Dr. Jose P. Balmaceda when the scandal erupted in 1995.

A top Riordan administration appointee is under criminal investigation for soliciting a teenage prostitute, impersonating a police officer and alleged conflicts of interest connected to his position, officials said Wednesday. Scott Z.

The California Commission on Judicial Performance on Monday publicly admonished a Superior Court judge in Glendale, who owned $45,000 worth of stock in the Walt Disney Co., for not disqualifying himself from four cases in which he ruled in Disney's favor. Judge Charles W. Stoll was also admonished for using court stationery to write two letters to a collection agency on behalf of a family member.

The California Commission on Judicial Performance publicly admonished a judge Monday who owned $45,000 worth of stock in the Walt Disney Co. for not disqualifying himself from four cases in which he ruled in Disney's favor. The commission also admonished Glendale Superior Court Judge Charles Stoll for using court stationery to write two letters to a collection agency on behalf of a family member.