Will Return to Courtroom Where He Was Stabbed : Attacked Lawyer Stands By His Client

The last time attorney Kenneth Kahn went to court with John Laurence Proudfoot, the Santa Monica lawyer left on a stretcher with an ice pick wound in his chest.

Next time--and there will be a next time, Kahn says--he intends to walk out the front door.

Kahn, who was stabbed in a Torrance courtroom last week just before Proudfoot was to be sentenced for assaulting a police officer, said Tuesday he will continue to represent his client, even though Proudfoot is now accused of attacking him, too.

Kahn said in an interview that he will return to the same Torrance courtroom April 20, when Judge Gary Hastings will try again to sentence Proudfoot, who was convicted in February of assaulting a Redondo Beach officer.

“I have an agreement to represent him,” said Kahn, who was in court on Tuesday for the first time since the stabbing. “Attorneys and clients have disagreements all the time. Clearly, they don’t rise to this intensity very often, but just because they do doesn’t mean the agreement is voided.”

Kahn, who was released from the hospital a day after the attack, has not spoken with his client. Proudfoot was shot in the right leg by a sheriff’s deputy after refusing to drop the ice pick and has been at the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center. He had been free on his own recognizance while awaiting sentencing.

“I have talked to his mother, and she has expressed great remorse over the incident,” Kahn said. “He still needs to be represented.”

Kahn said Proudfoot lunged at him with the ice pick after reading a probation report recommending admission to a state mental institution for a 90-day evaluation.

“He said it was all wrong, sort of rose out his chair, and I felt a blow to my chest,” Kahn said.

Even with the stabbing, though, Kahn said he will have no problem objectively representing Proudfoot at the sentencing.

“I can’t condemn him to the junk heap of humanity just because of this incident,” he said.

Last week, the district attorney’s office charged Proudfoot with assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon on a law enforcement officer and bringing a dangerous weapon into a courthouse in connection with the courtroom stabbing.

On those charges, Kahn said, Proudfoot will be on his own.