Los Angeles County Suits

Contending that property taxes should reflect the current real estate slump, a group of property owners filed suit Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court to force the county tax assessor to adjust assessments of homes that have declined in value. Five homeowners and real estate partnerships, represented by former county Assessor Alexander Pope, contend that Assessor Kenneth P.

Los Angeles County has reached a $15,000 legal settlement with the husband of Christine Maggiore, the late activist who rejected medical opinions that HIV causes AIDS. Maggiore and her husband, Robin Scovill, sued the county two years ago for allegedly violating their late 3-year-old daughter's civil rights by releasing an autopsy report that listed her cause of death as AIDS-related pneumonia. Eliza Jane Scovill had never been tested for HIV, and the couple argued that her death was not AIDS-related.

A Quartz Hill family sued Los Angeles County and the Sheriff's Department on Wednesday over the stabbing death of their mother by her daughter's ex-boyfriend, an attorney for the family said. The lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court seeks an unspecified amount of damages, said attorney Ronald Papell. Sheriff's officials declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has sued the Board of Supervisors to stop it from placing on the March ballot a measure that would impose term limits on his office. The measure, approved by supervisors last month over Baca's objections, would restrict board members and all other countywide elected officials to three terms. Baca, who is serving his first four-year term, would be able to serve three more terms if the initiative is approved by voters.

A woman is suing a Los Angeles County-operated drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Acton, alleging in a lawsuit that she was sexually assaulted in a van by a man in charge of driving her to the center. The woman accuses Butch Pentalion of driving a county-owned van en route to the Acton Rehabilitation Center off the road, then pinning her down and masturbating on top of her, according to the lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court.

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy paid a personal visit to a witness in a K-9 biting case in an effort to persuade the businessman to go along with the official report on the incident, according to sworn testimony in the matter. Lawndale businessman James Stadler says in a deposition that he refused to alter his own account.

After several lengthy legal battles following the loss of his job, whistle-blower Allen M. Weil is going to be compensated for what he believed was a bad deal between a computer company and his former boss, the county Office of Education. "I was a computer person who was interested in seeing that the taxpayer got a fair return for their money," Weil said after a settlement was reached this week in Norwalk Superior Court.

In a low-key, anticlimactic court hearing Wednesday, a judge finally spoke the words McMartin Pre-School molestation defendant Ray Buckey had waited seven years to hear: "The case of the People vs. Raymond Buckey is hereby dismissed and the defendant is discharged," Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg said. "All right, that's it. That completes this case."

The Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment (SCOPE) has filed a lawsuit challenging the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors' approval of the planned 1,880-house Westridge residential development in Stevenson Ranch, just west of Santa Clarita. The suit was filed Oct. 8 in Los Angeles Superior Court and joined by the Sierra Club and Stevenson Ranch Residents for Responsible Development.

As Los Angeles County prepares to pay a near-record $2.5-million settlement for injuries suffered by a mentally ill man improperly released from jail, sources confirmed Monday that the county's top lawyers ignored the advice of their own experts two years ago to settle the same case for $800,000 less.

Weeks after paying a record $27 million to settle lawsuits over holding adults in jail too long, Los Angeles County now faces a similar set of charges involving children who have been held in juvenile halls beyond their court-ordered release dates. The problem is a lack of coordination between the county's Probation Department, which runs the juvenile halls, and its child welfare agency, which cares for abused and neglected children.

They were treated like chattel, strip-searched, shackled, harangued and humiliated, then turned loose without even an apology. Loretha Britt, a plaintiff in Los Angeles County's record $27-million settlement over wrongful detainment of jail inmates, said she was strip-searched six times in four days during her 1997 incarceration. Several times it happened in hallways where passing male inmates and deputies made lewd jokes, she said.

Los Angeles County admitted Tuesday to illegally detaining some 400,000 people in county jails over five years as county supervisors agreed to pay $27 million to settle five class-action lawsuits. The settlement, among the largest sums ever paid by the county to resolve litigation, shows that the Sheriff's Department's long-standing problem of keeping inmates in jail after courts have ordered them released is far greater than previously known.

A former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy sued the department Monday, claiming he has been continuously retaliated against for reporting misconduct five years ago. Charles Hulsey, fired from the department in May, had--by his admission and according to some colleagues--a troubled history with the Sheriff's Department.

A lawsuit filed by the parents of a teenage girl raises an unusual legal question: When a student helps a school investigate threats, who pays if the young informant is sued? The attorney for the girl's parents, Stephen and Kimberly Tapia, said they are stuck with a $40,000 legal bill because their daughter did what school officials have been urging students to do since the 1999 Columbine massacre: Tell authorities if they see or hear anything suspicious.

In what would be one of the largest settlements in county history, a Los Angeles County panel recommended paying $4 million to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of a severely brain-damaged girl who was fed a steady diet of psychotropic drugs without the required court consent. The girl, now 4 years old and referred to in legal papers as Baby S.

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Rickey Ross Tuesday filed a $400-million suit against the city of Los Angeles and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates for alleged civil rights violations stemming from his arrest on murder charges. Ross was held for 82 days earlier this year on suspicion of killing three South-Central Los Angeles prostitutes, largely due to Los Angeles Police Department ballistics tests linking his gun to the murders.

A former female sheriff's deputy deserves $500,000 for being subjected to a pattern of harassment by male deputies who allegedly urinated in her locker and urged jail inmates to expose themselves in front of her, a county government claims board has recommended. The County Board of Supervisors, which makes the final decision in such cases, rarely overturns the recommendations of the three-member Los Angeles County Claims Board.

A Los Angeles deputy district attorney has been promoted to head deputy retroactively after settling her lawsuit against the previous administration--a case that became a rallying point for critics of former Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti. Monika Blodgett, who was transferred to a nonsupervisory role after she complained to the news media about the handling of cases in the Torrance office, also agreed to a $480,000 settlement, which includes $45,000 in back pay.

A 53-year-old doctor said Saturday he plans to use a $5.2-million age discrimination judgment against Los Angeles County to mend his broken heart. Dr. Fawzy Salama said he suffered a massive heart attack after being told four years ago that he was too old for a medical training program he had been accepted into at the county-run Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.