Los Angeles Suits

The Los Angeles city attorney's office is asking council members to approve settlements totaling more than $1 million in four more civil cases growing out of the Rampart Division police corruption scandal, according to city documents. The payouts--which are expected to be considered by the council this month--will bring the city's settlement totals in Rampart cases to $31 million.

The Los Angeles City Council agreed Wednesday to pay $7.6 million to a 33-year-old man who was left paralyzed after he was struck by a falling palm tree while walking his dog through a residential area in the Mid-Wilshire district. Tony Scott, who had moved to Los Angeles six years ago to pursue his dream of becoming a dancer, suffered a broken neck and shattered spinal cord and is confined to a wheelchair.

Approving the largest police misconduct settlement in city history, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday voted 13 to 0 to pay $15 million to Javier Francisco Ovando, who alleged he was shot by two LAPD Rampart officers, left for dead and subsequently framed and falsely imprisoned. City Atty. James Hahn, who proposed the agreement to the council, called Ovando's mistreatment at the LAPD's hands the "worst case I have ever seen."

In what would be the single largest police misconduct settlement in Los Angeles history, City Atty. James K. Hahn on Monday proposed that the city pay $15 million to a man who was shot in the head and chest, then allegedly framed by two Rampart Division officers.

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved a $900,000 settlement for a man who claims he spent 7 1/2 years in prison on a false drug charge concocted by former Los Angeles Police Officer Rafael Perez. Although Perez, who pleaded guilty to cocaine theft charges as part of a plea bargain, maintains that the 1992 arrest of Lorenzo Irving was valid, the district attorney's office believed there was enough evidence that warranted overturning the man's conviction.

A judge Monday threw out a $1.5-million verdict against the city and ordered a new trial in the case of a man hit by a police car while fleeing from officers. Raymond Watson was struck by a Los Angeles Police Department car while fleeing from officers near Exposition Park in 1997. Watson suffered a fractured skull and spinal injuries and was awarded $1.5 million by a jury in August.

The Los Angeles city attorney's office has agreed to pay $10.9 million to settle 29 federal civil rights lawsuits arising from the Rampart police scandal, it was disclosed Monday. The package deal, negotiated with attorney Gregory Yates, must be approved by the city's claim board and the City Council before it becomes final. Chief Assistant City Atty. Thomas Hokinson said the claims board will take up the proposal Wednesday.

The City Council approved a $15-million settlement in the first of four lawsuits filed by contractors who claim the city bungled its effort to expand the Hyperion sewage treatment plant. The suit, filed by Kiewit Pacific Construction Co., alleged that the city proceeded with defective construction plans, caused delays in its construction schedule and demanded extra work without paying for it. Similar suits, filed by two other firms, are pending.

Policing here is not what it used to be. Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice forced the city to agree to undertake sweeping reforms, almost exactly the kind of arrangement Los Angeles faces today. In Pittsburgh, there have been clear signs of improvement: The Bureau of Police, which once did not even bother to record uses of force or to give its officers annual performance evaluations, now does both. The number of lawsuits against police officers has fallen.

Citing racial discrimination, a Superior Court jury Friday unanimously awarded $5.34 million--one of the largest verdicts of its kind--to the first African American on the Los Angeles Police Department's elite bomb squad. During the two-week trial, John Francois, 32, who served 13 months on the squad, described incidents of harassment, including one before Halloween in 1996 in which a supervisor suggested Francois put on a suit and tie and come dressed as a "white man."