Hold Onions and Chili--Vendor Guilty

The verdict is in: guilty on every condiment.

Michael Mikhail, the hotdog pushcart vendor whose battle with the county health department led to a full jury trial, was convicted of onions and chili Thursday.

The 59-year-old Egyptian immigrant was acquitted of operating a dirty cart, however, while the jury could not decide whether he was guilty of leaving his lids off.

The saga we have come to relish appeared at an end after the jury deliberated through an impasse on a charge involving chili that had hung them 11 to 1 earlier this week. But when the would-be holdout said she was coerced into going along with her fellow jurors, Los Angeles Municipal Judge David Milton scheduled a hearing for today at which Deputy Public Defender Upinder Kalra will move for a mistrial.

The juror, an aerospace worker, said she was harassed and verbally abused by other panelists until she caved in:

“Finally I said, if everybody’s going to be happy, I’ll go along,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be published. Then she had second thoughts and returned to the courtroom on the verge of tears to explain to the judge what had happened.

For those who have been distracted by world events, Mikhail’s Tasty Hasty Dogs in the mid-Wilshire area have attracted not only a loyal following over the years but also repeated inspections that led to bleach being poured on his food and angry protests from other vendors over the health department’s policies.

Mikhail was arrested and charged in June with 11 violations of the health code--”to wit: chili (and) onions,” read the complaint. Seems that he was observed chopping and grilling fresh onions and ladling chili onto his Tasty Hasties, storing onions and buns in the same compartment, and not keeping his containers covered at all times--especially when customers, including some judges, were lined up at his cart outside the Paramount Building.

The misdemeanors each carry a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

At issue was whether the fixings served with his hot dogs were merely “condiments” and therefore legal, rather than “potentially hazardous” food that was not prepackaged at an approved facility.

The jury agreed that the law governing “retail food vehicles” is vague and needs clarification. But most of them also agreed that Mikhail appeared to have broken it, especially since the chief inspector said he had.

There was one exception. “I said onion is a condiment,” the dissenting juror said afterwards. “But they (the rest of the jury) said no, because it was cooked, not in a raw state.”

Ditto for chili. “They told me he was transporting it (unheated), but we didn’t know in what form.” Mikhail said he buys canned chili and, once opened, keeps it at 140 degrees.

Tempers flared in the jury room, as though they were deciding death, not indigestion. One juror cried when the judge ordered the panel to keep deliberating.

The lone juror who had a reasonable doubt said the others called her “a stubborn old woman” (she is in her mid-40s) and suggested that her unwillingness to look them in the eye must be “cultural” (she is of Japanese ancestry).

Jurors were not told that signals passed between a health inspector who was testifying and another inspector seated at the rear of the courtroom led to dismissal of five counts.

The spunky vendor, who sees himself as a little businessman up against the big guys, said he will appeal his conviction after sentencing Sept. 27. He added that, as a heart patient who has undergone two bypass surgeries, he has been too upset by the recent charges to ply his trade just now.

“I am for the public health too,” he said wearily after the verdicts. “But I am proud of my stand. You can see everything there. You have freedom of choice; that’s the United States of America.

“I don’t have a topless or bottomless (act) to attract customers, I don’t twist anybody’s arm to buy hot dogs. All I have is my product. And if I have something wrong, the word would go out and I would be out of business.”