Council Unit Seeks to Fight Activist’s Suit : City: An ex-Black Panther official claims his civil rights were violated when police files were released. The city attorney’s office had proposed a settlement.

The city should refuse to pay $450,000 to settle the lawsuit of a political activist who accused Assistant Los Angeles Police Chief Robert L. Vernon of using a department computer to retrieve and spread information against him during a municipal election in Pasadena, a City Council committee decided Friday.

On the advice of the city attorney’s office, the three members of the Budget and Finance Committee--council members Zev Yaroslavsky, Joy Picus and Richard Alatorre--refused to talk about their decision made at Friday’s closed-door session.

But a highly placed city source said the committee members voted unanimously to oppose the proposed settlement, even though the city attorney’s office had recommended that it be accepted.

“We are going to fight it,” the source said.

Vernon, who attended the session, said he, too, was remaining silent on advice of the city attorney. The committee members on Tuesday will unveil their recommendation to the full City Council, which will make the final decision.

The lawsuit was filed by Michael Zinzun, a former Black Panther Party official who claims that Vernon--the Police Department’s second-in-command--violated Zinzun’s civil rights and damaged his 1989 campaign for the Pasadena Board of City Directors by making sensitive department files available to his political critics.

The files came from the department’s Anti-Terrorist Division, but Vernon said they were unclassified documents that consisted primarily of excerpts from newspaper and magazine articles, according to Zinzun’s attorney, Dan Stormer.

Zinzun eventually lost the election to Chris Holden, son of Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden, who has been a strong supporter of the Police Department.

Vernon, for his part, was rebuked by Police Chief Daryl F. Gates after the incident became public and was asked to pay for the computer time.

Saying that the council committee was “making a mistake” in rejecting the settlement tentatively approved earlier by him and the city’s attorney’s office, Stormer said Friday that it is the “the responsibility of the City Council to rectify the harm caused by their employees. . . .”

“It’s a waste of the taxpayers’ money and the court’s time to try this,” Stormer said. “I’m confident that we will prevail in court.”

On the other hand, Yaroslavsky, who is chairman of the committee, suggested earlier this week that the proposed settlement might be a bad idea.

“If all Chief Vernon did was hand over a bunch of newspaper articles, then why should it cost the taxpayers $450,000?” Yaroslavsky asked. “The public interest may be better served with a full trial, with people being placed under oath and letting the chips fall where they may.”