Zinzun Award of $3.8 Million Is Overturned : Court: Judge says there was no evidence to indicate that Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon’s conduct defamed black activist or caused him emotional harm.

Citing a lack of “legal merit,” a judge on Tuesday overturned a jury award of $3.8 million to black activist Michael Zinzun in a high-profile civil rights and defamation case against the city of Los Angeles and Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Berg said he “does not condone” Vernon’s actions in using a police computer to obtain information that Zinzun says cost him a seat on the Pasadena Board of City Directors, now called the City Council, in 1989, but took the unusual move because of legal “flaws” in the case.

Zinzun, a former Black Panther, had sued the city and Vernon for disseminating information in a way that led to false suggestions he was the subject of a “file” in the Police Department’s anti-terrorist division. Vernon maintained that he had only used a computer to retrieve newspaper articles about Zinzun, which he passed along to a neighbor, former Pasadena Mayor John Crowley. Central to Zinzun’s case was the way a pre-election article in The Times described Vernon’s activities.

In a highly technical 20-page decision relayed to both sides by telephone, Berg said there was no evidence to suggest that Vernon’s conduct defamed Zinzun or caused him emotional harm. He noted that The Times later corrected its initial account of Vernon’s activities to make it clear that Vernon had only retrieved newspaper clippings and not secret terrorist files about Zinzun.

An outraged Zinzun said Berg’s disregard for the jury verdict shows that the judge is in league with police. He said he will appeal--and demand interest on the money “once we are successful.” He also promised to use part of any award to establish a civilian review panel to oversee the Police Department’s complaint process.

“You’re going to hear a lot more people speaking out against this injustice,” Zinzun said. “It’s not Michael Zinzun versus the LAPD, but the citizens of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, who are subject to these kind of abuses--that’s what this represents.”

Zinzun appeared at a Police Commission meeting later in the day to urge that Vernon and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates be suspended pending an investigation of his case and to recommend that a civilian review board be set up.

His attorney, Dan Stormer, was in Washington when informed of Berg’s decision. “We believe that the judge made a grievous error,” Stormer said in a statement issued through his office. “His decision is unsupported both by facts and the law. We feel confident we will succeed on appeal.”

He added that Berg had “misread” the facts in finding that no damage was done to Zinzun and that the newspaper correction, which appeared the day after the Pasadena municipal election, rendered the issues moot:

“The retraction was after the election, after his chances of winning were dashed, and the emotional distress of the initial implication that he was a terrorist and had a file at ATD (the Police Department’s Anti-Terrorist Division) had already settled in.”

But the judge said that even “if the jury concluded that Vernon recklessly could have created the impression, at least, that there was an intelligence file when he made (the articles) available to Mr. Crowley . . . there is no evidence from Vernon’s neighbor or anyone else that (he) told anyone. . . .

“The evidence most clearly indicates that an unknown source within LAPD called The Times, presumably to embarrass Vernon, and also LAPD sources alerted Gates. Any other explanation is bottomed on murky speculation.”

Berg had forewarned attorneys for both sides in May that he planned to overturn the jury verdict and award in an unusual action known as a “judgment notwithstanding the verdict.”

Berg’s written decision said both sides may still wish to try to settle the dispute, given the “novelty” of federal claims included in the state lawsuit and the uncertainty of an appeal.

Shortly before the defamation trial began, the Los Angeles City Council rejected a $450,000 settlement agreed on by Zinzun and the city attorney’s office. After the trial, the council again refused to approve a settlement--this time a $1.6-million deal worked out between Stormer and City Atty. James Hahn.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee, lauded Berg’s decision.

“I am extremely pleased at the judge’s decision to reverse this ridiculous verdict of nearly $4 million against this city for an action that did not deserve that kind of award. . . . While the court does not condone and neither does the City Council condone the behavior of Chief Vernon in accessing a city-owned computer for purposes that were not city-related, the $3.8-million verdict against the city of Los Angeles was . . . not only excessive--not one dollar should have been paid in this case.”

Jurors who voted in April to award Zinzun $3.83 million, saying that they did not believe police accounts of the Zinzun affair, voiced mixed reactions.

An angry Betty Benefield said the news was “a shock.”

Benefield, a Los Angeles Municipal Court secretary, said the case had not been an easy one for jurors to deal with and that she had spent sleepless nights during the intense jury deliberations.

“(So) what was the point of the whole process?” she asked. “It’s just been a waste of our time and I think it was a miscarriage of justice for this to happen.”

But fellow juror Sheila Weiner, who voted against awarding damages to Zinzun, said she was “absolutely thrilled” by the judge’s ruling.

“It was a very difficult trial for me,” said Weiner, who works as a jury supervisor for the Los Angeles Superior Court system. “But I couldn’t be more happy in my whole life. (The jury’s decision) was ludicrous.”

Neither Vernon nor Deputy City Atty. Mary House, who defended the city and Vernon, could be reached for comment.

Contributing to this article were Times staff writers Louis Sahagun and Paul Feldman.