Ex-Officer Sued Over Settlement to Rape Victim : Courts: The city attorney wants to recoup $150,000 a woman received after she was assaulted by an off-duty patrolman in 1981. The move is a legal first for L.A.

In the first such case in Los Angeles history, the city attorney’s office Thursday sued a former police sergeant to recover the $150,000 in damages the city had to pay a Northridge woman because he raped her.

In a brief news release, City Atty. James K. Hahn said the city intends “to actively sue any officer or other city employee who commits a criminal act in which the city has to pay compensatory damages to a victim.”

But officials declined to say whether the action is meant to be a precedent for the many high-profile cases in which the city may have to pay court-ordered damages for the actions of its employees, including the Rodney G. King beating.

Thursday’s lawsuit involves a 1981 incident in which an off-duty traffic sergeant, Leigh B. Schroyer, stopped a woman on suspicion of drunk driving. He gave her a sobriety test--which she flunked--drove her home and raped her on her living room sofa.

Schroyer, who resigned from the Police Department shortly afterward, was convicted of rape and sentenced to 18 months in state prison in 1982.

Subsequently, the woman sued Schroyer and the city, claiming the incident had left her with a drinking and weight problem and had inhibited her sex life. In 1986, a Superior Court jury held Schroyer and the city liable for $150,000 each in damages.

The city appealed and lost in a landmark California Supreme Court decision.

Assistant Senior City Atty. Tom Hokinson refused to comment on whether the lawsuit against Schroyer signaled the city’s plan to sue city employees in other lawsuits it might lose, including the King beating.

Last month, a jury ordered the city to pay $6.1 million in a case in which an off-duty officer fondled a 13-year-old Hollywood girl in 1989 after gaining entry to her home under the pretext of conducting an investigation. In 1990, the officer, Stanley Tanabe, was convicted of sexual battery, lewd conduct and burglary, and sentenced to two years in state prison.

If the Schroyer case were replayed today, the city would file a cross-complaint against the officer, Hokinson said.

Hahn’s move was applauded by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who, as chairman of the budget committee, is one of the council’s most interested observers of lawsuits against police officers.

“I think the City Council pushed him to do this,” Yaroslavsky said. “I don’t think the council felt the taxpayers should have to pay for this guy’s crime. This wasn’t a close call, where maybe the officer’s actions could be interpreted as being in the line of duty. This was a brutal crime.”

But Vann Slatter, a Beverly Hills attorney who represented the Northridge woman in her 1986 lawsuit, called Hahn’s lawsuit a “meaningless political act” by a city attorney trying to show he’s protecting the taxpayers in the wake of a series of big-ticket settlements against the city in police brutality and misconduct cases.

“The city should know it can’t collect from Schroyer,” Slatter said. Schroyer has so little money that he’s “judgment-proof,” the attorney said.

Slatter said his client, who no longer lives in the Los Angeles area, never collected the $150,000 the jury ordered Schroyer to pay her. Slatter’s client did, however, collect the $150,000 from the city.

It is that amount, plus interest and the cost of the lawsuit, that the city is now seeking to recover from Schroyer. The total tab: $222,676.11.

Schroyer’s exact whereabouts are not known, but he is believed to be living in Arizona, Hokinson said.

Yaroslavsky disputed Slatter’s characterization of Hahn’s motives in filing the damage-recovery case, saying he doubted that the city attorney would waste the taxpayers’ money with a lawsuit if he knew no damages could be collected.