Jury Rejects All but 2 Claims in ’85 Brutality Case : Police: Two women are awarded a total of $13,600 in a melee at the now-closed GM plant in Van Nuys. Twelve other plaintiffs lose.

A Van Nuys civil jury Wednesday rejected all but two minor brutality claims against Los Angeles police stemming from a 1985 face-off between officers and workers at the now-closed General Motors plant.

After a six-week trial in which police and auto workers often flatly contradicted one another in testimony, the Superior Court jury awarded a total of $13,600 to two women who said police hit them with batons without provocation.

Jurors expressed sympathy for some of the remaining 12 plaintiffs, who suffered more serious broken bones, bruises and scrapes in the incident.

But they said in interviews that there was not enough evidence to support their allegations of unprovoked attacks.

Police said they went to the plant during the workers’ dinner break Oct. 3, 1985, in response to complaints about employees drinking publicly and milling about on both sides of Van Nuys Boulevard, sometimes blocking traffic.

About 75 police dispersed a crowd of 600, some of whom threw rocks and bottles at the officers, according to testimony. Police said many in the crowd defied orders to disperse and several resisted arrest for drinking in public.

Two jurors also said that they were impressed with the thoroughness of the investigation into the incident by the Police Department’s internal affairs division, which concluded that officers waded into the crowd with batons only after being pelted by defiant workers.

Several plaintiffs, who were a racial and ethnic cross-section of the plant’s work force, bitterly complained after the verdict that they had no chance with a jury that did not include blacks or Latinos.

Art Rodriguez, a former United Auto Workers official, was one of several plaintiffs who alleged there was a “racist edge to this verdict.”

He noted that the two plaintiffs awarded damages are Anglos and that 11 of the 12 others denied damages are either African-American or Latino.

The stories of the two awarded damages are “no different than those who were denied damages,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Hermez Moreno. “The only difference is that they are white.”

Moreno said he fought unsuccessfully to have the trial moved downtown “where there would be minorities who don’t automatically think that police are always well-behaved.”

He noted that the pool from which the jury was selected had only one black and a handful of Latinos, none of whom made it onto the panel.

Deputy City Atty. Eskel H. Solomon said he opposed moving the case because “this is where the incident occurred. And this is the jury panel you get in Van Nuys.”

Solomon contended throughout the trial that the case had been completely investigated by the internal affairs division and that allegations by the plaintiffs either didn’t add up or were without corroboration.

Linda Smith, an African-American plaintiff, said that the verdict “proves you can’t get a fair trial in Van Nuys. It’s just like Simi Valley,” site of the trial in which four white police officers were acquitted of all but one charge in the Rodney G. King beating.

Smith said on the stand that police hit her in the eye without warning and struck two girlfriends near her with batons, driving them to the ground.

“We were all wasting our breath,” she said. “That jury was prejudiced against us from the beginning.”

Tomas Armendariz, who testified that police arbitrarily singled him out from the crowd, sprayed Mace in his face and broke his arm, complained that jurors “wouldn’t believe me no matter what the evidence.”

Jurors, in a detailed question-and-answer verdict submitted by Judge Thomas Schneider, found that Armendariz was not entitled to damages because he had resisted arrest and interfered with officers trying to quell the crowd.

Maria Snell, who was awarded $8,100 by the jury, termed the damages “nothing but peanuts” and said she did not know why she won and others did not.

Snell and Jacqueline Eagle, who was awarded $5,500, left shortly after the verdict as their fellow plaintiffs grew increasingly angry.

Jurors, who stayed close to the bailiffs for more than an hour after court adjourned, left only after an angry knot of plaintiffs waiting down the hall to challenge them drifted away.

“I can see how a non-white would see it as a racial or ethnic thing,” said one male juror who, like others, would not give his name, “but each case was decided on its merits.”

“There had to be a preponderance of evidence, and it just wasn’t there for 12 of them,” said another juror.

Both Moreno and Solomon said it is unlikely the verdict will be appealed.