Marital Discord Spills Over Into City Hall : Dispute: Lynwood official will challenge husband’s restraining order that bars her from council meetings.

When Compton Superior Court Judge Richard Kalustian ordered a Lynwood woman last month to stay away from her husband’s workplace, he saw it as just another one of hundreds of orders he has issued in domestic disputes.

But Kalustian did not know that the woman was Lynwood Mayor Pro Tem Evelyn Wells and he had barred her from attending City Council meetings because her husband, a city employee, had listed City Hall as his work site.

“I didn’t have a clue,” Kalustian said Thursday. “They were just two names to me.”

City Councilman Armando Rea said Wells has missed only one council meeting--an absence that has been, at most, a minor inconvenience.

Wells’ attorney, Mablean Paxton, said she will be in court today to challenge the restraining order.

But the simmering dispute between Wells and her husband, Donald Morris, has become an embarrassing ordeal for the city that “makes us look disgusting,” Rea said.

The restraining order is the latest twist in what has become a sort of Mia vs. Woody of Lynwood.

Wells, an eight-year City Council veteran, is known in the city as a quiet but persistent advocate of women’s and youth issues.

Morris, her husband of seven years, is a part-time cable television production specialist for the city.

Morris said he suspected that his wife was having an affair with Lynwood City Manager Laurence H. Adams Sr., who was hired by the city in November. Wells has disputed the claim that she was having an affair.

Morris says he secretly videotaped Wells and Adams several times in what he described as “a passionate kiss”--another charge that Wells and Adams dispute.

Morris said he confronted his wife with his tapes and after several angry exchanges, including one episode in which he says she went to get a gun from her car, he decided to ask for a court order keeping her away from their home and his place of work.

Kalustian agreed to grant a temporary order until April 20, when a hearing for a permanent restraining order will be held.

Morris said he had no idea that the order would keep his wife from conducting city business. He said he listed City Hall as his work address, although he works at a satellite office.

“It was a small oversight on the judge’s part,” Morris said.

Morris said he has no problem with letting Wells back in City Hall to conduct business.

“I have no complaint against that,” he said. “Just as long as she doesn’t threaten me anymore.

“I still love my wife, but she has got to change the way she’s acting.”

Wells was unavailable for comment and Adams did not return several phone calls to his office.

Paxton said: “What is really going on is that they have a marital problem and the man is in a jealous rage. He’s decided he’s going to destroy her politically.”