Injunctions

Permanent injunctions were issued Friday against rival gangs in San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano forbidding members from engaging in a wide variety of noncriminal activities, including riding bicycles in public with other gang members. Law enforcement officials said the restrictions are necessary to stop the gangs from terrorizing citizens. Since the temporary injunction was issued in November, gang-related calls to police dropped 33% in San Clemente and 85% in San Juan Capistrano, authorities said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is just beginning its markup of the bipartisan immigration bill, but already opponents and supporters of the sweeping legislation are fighting over which immigrants should be allowed to legalize their status and which should be deported. Clearly it makes sense to refuse legal status to immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes. But some lawmakers, including Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), are backing a provision that goes too far, excluding immigrants who have no criminal history simply because their names appear in a database of gang members or on a gang injunction.

A key strategy in Los Angeles' battle against street gangs -- the use of court injunctions -- has come under attack by state lawmakers who are moving to strictly limit it. The state Senate has approved a measure that would allow suspected gang members who do not commit a crime for five years to be automatically removed from civil injunctions unless prosecutors can show they remain a public threat.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s decision to violate an injunction forbidding him to pray, sing or march in public in Birmingham, Ala. On Good Friday 1963 (which fell on April 12 that year), King led a march from the 16th Street Baptist Church (where four black children would be killed in a bombing five months later), heading toward City Hall. He was almost immediately arrested, charged with violating a court order and taken to the Birmingham jail.

In their ongoing battle against the city's entrenched gangs, Los Angeles prosecutors and police increasingly have relied in recent years on a favorite legal weapon: court-ordered injunctions. The injunctions aim to severely curtail gang activity by, among other things, prohibiting gang members and their associates from socializing with each other, carrying weapons or wearing certain clothing anywhere inside of so-called "safe zones" that typically encompass the neighborhoods where the gangs are active.

Re "Injunction Has Community Feeling Handcuffed," April 28 Gang injunctions are unconstitutional and need to be abolished. The 1st Amendment guarantees the right to peaceably assemble. These injunctions clearly infringe on that right. Furthermore, some of the people who are being issued injunctions aren't even gang members. (Not that injunctions would be justified if that weren't the case.) Preventing crime doesn't justify violating peoples' constitutional rights. And if eliminating gang injunctions means more crime, so be it -- nobody ever said freedom was free.

Riverside officials announced the county's first permanent gang injunction Friday, saying gang activity had eroded the community's ability to enjoy one of its oldest parks. Patterson Park was once a launching point for future major leaguers such as Dusty Baker, Bobby Bonds and Alvin Davis. But recently, it has become the domain of the East Side Riva gang, marked by killings and threats. "This is a park that has literally been taken over by the East Side Riva," said Riverside County Dist. Atty.

Declaring war on a local street gang tied to three recent shooting deaths, the City Council has agreed to seek a civil injunction that would bar members from engaging in a host of otherwise legal activities. Modeled after a similar action taken by the council in 1991, the injunction would prevent members of the Shaken' Cat Midgets from, among other things, gathering in public or on private property within the injunction area without written permission of the owner.

A Superior Court judge has granted an injunction restricting the activities of a Compton street gang allegedly at the center of a recent bloody gang war, authorities said Friday. Judge Richard L. Fruin Jr. approved the injunction against the Compton Varrio Tortilla Flats gang, which has had recent gunfights with rival gangs that have left at least one dead and four wounded, including two bystanders, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jacqueline Jackson.

Microsoft Corp. was again barred from giving software developers versions of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java programming language that fail Sun's tests for wide compatibility. U.S. District Judge Ronald M. Whyte this week reinstated a 1998 preliminary injunction in Sun's ongoing lawsuit charging that Microsoft deliberately polluted Java to squelch competition to its Windows operating system.

Just as the holiday bills are about to come due, a federal appeals court Wednesday ruled that banks may post checking account withdrawals in a manner that allows them to garner higher overdraft fees. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned a District Court injunction that prohibited Wells Fargo from charging Californians overdraft fees based on posting the most expensive debit-card transactions first. The 9th Circuit, ruling that a California consumer law was preempted by a federal banking law, also overturned an order that required Wells Fargo to pay its California customers $203 million in restitution.

Apple has decided to appeal a federal judge's ruling that denied the company's request to ban 26 Samsung products.  In August, a jury ruled that the Samsung products had infringed a handful of Apple patents and ordered the South Korean tech giant to pay $1.05 billion in damages to the maker of the iPhone.  Apple then sought a potentially more devastating punishment against Samsung by requesting a permanent injunction against those products....

After the coffee. Before wondering if I'll read old Morning Fix columns when I'm 80. The Skinny: This is not a spoiler. I saw "Flight" the other night and there are two scenes in it where characters just happen to have hundreds of dollars in their wallets. In an age when everyone uses a debit card or pays with an iPhone, how many people not named Tony Soprano still carry wads of cash around? Thursday's stories include the latest in the legal fight over the AutoHop, all you need to know about James Bond and how real is NBC's comeback?

A Los Angeles federal judge has denied Fox's request for a preliminary injunction to stop satellite broadcaster Dish Network from offering its new commercial-skipping feature known as the AutoHop. “Dish is gratified that the Court has sided with consumer choice and control by rejecting Fox's efforts to deny our customers access to AutoHop," said R. Stanton Dodge, executive vice president and general counsel of Dish. While the injunction was not granted, Fox said it didn't come away empty-handed.

Less than a month after approving restrictions on Halloween activities by registered sex offenders, the city of Simi Valley has been sued, accused of violating their 1st Amendment rights and those of their families. The city's new law bans Halloween displays and outside lighting every Oct. 31 at the homes of people convicted of sex crimes. For offenders listed on the Megan's Law website, the city also requires a sign on the front door in letters at least an inch tall: "No candy or treats at this residence.

A heated labor dispute between American Airlines and its pilots got uglier this week, possibly setting the stage for more flight delays and cancellations over the weekend. American, whose parent company AMR Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection last year, got approval earlier this month from a Bankruptcy Court judge to throw out the pilots' previous contract. The airline said it wanted to cut labor costs up to 20% companywide. But contract negotiations with the pilots have not gone smoothly.

A court-ordered injunction issued against a planned Wal-Mart in Burbank could sideline the project and force the city to prove the world's largest retailer won't cause significant harm to local roadways and businesses. Wal-Mart had been planning to renovate the former Great Indoors site next to the Empire Center in time to open in mid- to late 2013, but the Los Angeles County Superior Court injunction last week effectively stops all work until the claims raised in a lawsuit filed by three Burbank residents earlier this year are settled.

Unable to stop ticket scalpers from repeatedly violating city laws, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has filed suit to bar 17 of them - and potentially many more - from setting foot anywhere near five of Los Angeles' most popular sports and concert venues. The injunction sought by Trutanich is the same forceful tool he has used repeatedly against a growing list of targets, including violent criminal gangs, graffiti "taggers" and drug dealers on skid row. And while critics complain about injunctions' effect on civil liberties, there are times when they're appropriate.