Lawsuits

Michael Jackson's death nearly four years ago has been the subject of intense curiosity, endless media speculation and even a dramatic courtroom drama in which the King of Pop's doctor was found guilty of causing his death. But all that may end up being a warm-up act for the legal showdown set to begin Monday . In a wrongful death lawsuit, the singer's mother and three children accuse concert promoter Anschutz Entertainment Group of threatening to end Jackson's career if he failed to deliver on a series of comeback concerts in London and hiring the doctor who was later convicted of giving the singer a lethal dose of the anesthetic propofol.

The state Education Department has ignored its obligation to make sure that thousands of students learning English receive adequate and legally required assistance, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. State officials said they had not studied the lawsuit, but insisted they are meeting their legal obligations. The suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others, focuses on an estimated 20,000 students who are receiving no help or inadequate services as they work to learn English and keep up academically at the same time.

As he campaigns to become the city's next controller, Councilman Dennis Zine said his first job in office would be to audit the Los Angeles Police Department's risk management division to find out why so many officers are involved in lawsuits. The city has spent as much as $50 million on legal settlements in recent years on cases it could have avoided if commanders did a better job supervising officers, says Zine, a former LAPD motorcycle officer who faces lawyer Ron Galperin in a May 21 runoff election.

The family of an unarmed Culver City man fatally shot in the back last November filed a $15-million wrongful-death and civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies and the county on Friday. Jose de la Trinidad, 36, a father of two, was fatally shot Nov. 10 by deputies who said they believed he was reaching for a weapon after he got out of a car following a short pursuit in an unincorporated county area of Willowbrook. The suit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleges that Deputies Angel Grandes and Alexandro Gonzalez shot and killed De la Trinidad after he got out of the car even though he was complying with the deputies orders and had his hands raised above his head with his back to them.

The family of an unarmed Culver City man fatally shot in the back last November have filed a $15-million wrongful-death and civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies and the county on Friday. Jose de la Trinidad, a 36-year-old father of two, was fatally shot on Nov. 10 by deputies who claimed they believed he was reaching for a weapon after a he got out of a car following a short pursuit in an unincorporated county area of Willowbrook. The suit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleges that Deputies Angel Grandes and Alexandro Gonzalez shot and killed De la Trinidad after he got out of the car even though he was complying with deputies and had his hands raised above his head with his back to them.

SACRAMENTO --  Brett Schoenhals thought he was following the law by putting one of California's all-too-familiar warnings in the bar of his Coffee Table restaurant in Eagle Rock. Soon after he posted the sign, “This facility contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm,” Schoenhals got a letter from a lawyer saying he was representing an irate patron who wanted to see more warnings. Invoking the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, or Proposition 65, the lawyer threatened a lawsuit.

There are trolls who live under bridges in fantasy novels. Then there are "copyright trolls. " The latter have always occupied one of the most squalid corners of the legal system. They're people or firms that acquire copyrights to movies, music or other creative works chiefly to turn a profit by filing lawsuits alleging piracy. Often the threat of a lawsuit is used to scare Web users into paying nominal settlement fees to avoid legal costs and a big penalty. Collect a few checks of a few thousand bucks each from enough defendants, and presto!

The lawsuit filed by Michael Jackson's mother and children blaming entertainment giant AEG for the singer's death is expected to take more than four months to try, the judge said last week. The length of the trial was the court's first concern as jury selection began April 2 in a downtown courtroom where Jackson's towering legacy will be pitted against a business enterprise that has had a profound influence on the entertainment scene in Los Angeles. Thirty-five potential jurors were brought into Superior Court Judge Yvette M. Palazuelos' courtroom and given a questionnaire to see who could take that much time from their personal and work lives.

Carol Champommier vs. the United States of America . That's not a phrase that Carol Champommier ever expected to see. She's a schoolteacher, not an activist; a rule follower, not a renegade. But Champommier is suing the United States because a federal agent shot her son to death in a parking lot encounter that played out like a scene from an action movie, where two unrelated story lines coalesce in violent tragedy. Government lawyers contend the shooting three years ago was reasonable - that 18-year-old Zac Champommier tried to run down an officer with his car, creating a "deadly, immediate threat" that justified gunfire.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel of San Diego has signaled that he's prepared to dismiss a bizarre lawsuit filed by Prime Healthcare Services against the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and the Service Employees International Union. In a tentative ruling handed down Thursday, Curiel said he found no merit in Prime's claim that Kaiser and the SEIU had conspired against the Ontario hospital company. Curiel's dismissal is subject to a hearing in his courtroom Friday and a final order to be handed down later.