Los Angeles City Attorney

Los Angeles city attorney candidate Murray Kane, through a combination of legal attacks, news conferences and a $110,000 television ad campaign, has endeared himself to opponents of Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s drilling plans by vowing to halt the controversial Pacific Palisades project if he is elected.

The Los Angeles city attorney does at least two and arguably three jobs. He is the city's advocate in court; the legal advisor to the mayor, City Council and government agencies; and the chief prosecutor of misdemeanors in the city. The office's functions are so disparate that there are periodically calls to break it up, to make the city's counsel an appointed position while still electing the city's prosecutor. That idea is not before voters this spring, but four candidates are: incumbent Carmen Trutanich, former Assemblyman Mike Feuer and private lawyers Greg Smith and Noel Weiss.

The city prosecutor who was incumbent James K. Hahn's lone challenger in the Los Angeles city attorney race has quit his job. "It would be the height of hypocrisy to return to that office," Michael Guarino said Thursday of his resignation as deputy city attorney. Guarino, 44, waged a bitter campaign against his boss, saying Hahn failed to prosecute political insiders and was just marking time as city attorney until running for higher office.

While Jesse Bravo was being treated for schizophrenia at White Memorial Medical Center last year, his wife, Laura, called the hospital daily and visited him several times. But when hospital officials decided to discharge him, Laura Bravo said, they didn't notify her and instead left him outside a rehabilitation center in South Los Angeles. She said her husband, who is not homeless, never went inside and spent days on the streets before being found. "Not knowing where he was was very scary," she said.

Like the winged mythological monsters they are named for--with a dubious power to spoil whatever they descend upon--the Harpys street gang has soured the lives of residents and merchants in a neighborhood near USC, city prosecutors say.

Deputy Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Raymond D. Mireles of Sherman Oaks was appointed to the Municipal Court bench in East Los Angeles by Gov. George Deukmejian. Mireles, 42, replaces Judge Robert Martinez, who has been promoted to the Superior Court. Mireles has served as a deputy district attorney since 1977 and formerly was a deputy Los Angeles city attorney.

The city of Los Angeles has reached a $250,000 out-of-court settlement with the family of a police officer who was shot to death two years ago during a traffic dispute with a fellow LAPD officer.

A citizens organization that monitors polluters of the Santa Monica Bay has received $6,000 from the Los Angeles city attorney's office. The source of the money was a Long Beach tugboat company that had been ordered to pay that amount after it pleaded no contest to dumping fuel into Los Angeles Harbor, said Vince Sato, supervising attorney of the city attorney's Environmental Protection Unit. The tugboat firm, Connolly-Pacific Co.

El Segundo officials are taking the city of Los Angeles to court over its plan to overhaul and expand the huge Hyperion sewage treatment plant in Playa del Rey. In a suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, El Segundo seeks to block the project until Los Angeles gauges how the expanded plant will affect nearby residents. Attorneys for El Segundo, which borders the plant, say air pollution is the city's chief concern.

Los Angeles city prosecutors Wednesday accused the parent company of insurance giant Anthem Blue Cross of California of falsely stating that it had changed its procedures for canceling the policies of patients after they become sick. The Los Angeles city attorney's office said that WellPoint Inc. misled the public earlier this year when it denied reports that it targeted women with breast cancer for cancellation. The prosecutors' action is the latest chapter in the city attorney's ongoing case against WellPoint.

The culinary combat involving the selection of new dining spots inside Los Angeles International Airport has taken another turn: a complaint to the city attorney alleging that two more companies vying for contracts have conflicts of interest. The charges leveled by Host International Inc. prompted the Board of Referred Powers, which features five of the Los Angeles City Council's 15 members, to postpone a hearing set for Thursday to review the bidding process and the finalists selected by airport officials for retail, food and beverage contracts.

State lawmakers moved Tuesday to vastly expand the powers of the Los Angeles city attorney by supporting a measure that would give him his own grand jury. City Atty. Carmen Trutanich asked that Los Angeles be the only city in California given power to empanel a grand jury to investigate significant misdemeanor cases. Legislation approved by the state Senate on Tuesday would grant that request, providing the panel with authority to subpoena documents and compel testimony before criminal charges are filed.

Supermarket giant Ralphs and its parent company were charged Tuesday with overcharging customers, false advertising and false labeling after an undercover operation by Los Angeles county officials. The multicount criminal case, filed by the Los Angeles city attorney's criminal branch, said Ralphs overcharged on prepackaged and weighed products such as fried chicken, bulk coffee, salads and fish. The chain was fined for similar violations in 2008 and 2009. Ralphs and parent company Kroger Co. could face fines and penalties of up to $256,000 each.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich's campaign against towering supergraphics has yielded several victories in sign-saturated Hollywood, with eight of the oversize images coming down in three weeks -- a major break from the stalemate of previous years. Prosecutors announced Friday that two of Hollywood's tallest and most controversial images, standing at an estimated 11 stories near Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, were being removed after the billboard company received a cease-and-desist letter.

Government by tantrum is never a pretty sight. This week, we've had bicoastal examples of just how unlovely it can be. In Washington, Sen. Jim Bunning abused traditional senatorial prerogatives, and in Los Angeles, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich flouted the bail system in, of all things, a billboard case. On Tuesday, Bunning -- the soon-to-retire junior Republican senator from Kentucky -- used the threat of a one-man filibuster to block for a month the emergency extension of $10 billion in federal aid to people hard-hit by the economic crisis.

A citizens advisory panel with the Los Angeles city attorney's office is seeking nominees for its ninth annual community service awards. Ted Goldstein, executive director of the Criminal Justice Panel, said the awards are presented each year to individuals, businesses, groups and members of the media whose volunteer efforts aid law enforcement or the criminal justice system.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich launched a fresh assault against the outdoor advertising industry Tuesday, announcing the filing of a lawsuit alleging that supergraphics were unlawfully installed on 12 buildings throughout the city. The nuisance-abatement suit contends that multistory vinyl ads were placed illegally on the Sherman Oaks Galleria, the Howard Hughes Center in Westchester and other buildings in North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and elsewhere. The case was the first filed against a sign company by Trutanich, who took office July 1 after promising during last year's election campaign that he would crack down on unpermitted billboards.

Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn was charged Friday with battery and vandalism in connection with an attack on a photographer near Brentwood Country Mart last fall, officials said. Penn, 49, faces up to 18 months in jail if convicted of the misdemeanor charges stemming from the run-in Oct. 12. The charges were filed by the Los Angeles city attorney's office. "We are alleging he kicked a photographer, and we are also accusing him of breaking the photographer's camera," said Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the office.