LOS ANGELES : City Official’s Law Firm Awarded $70,000 in Fees

A Los Angeles city commissioner’s law firm has been awarded $70,000 in legal fees by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, who found that the firm had helped to right constitutional inadequacies in the city’s ethics law.

The money was awarded by Judge David Yaffe to a law firm in which city Library Commissioner Doug Ring is a partner, a reward for the legal challenge that the firm led against a law that required broad disclosure of city officials’ personal finances.

Ring had said that the law unnecessarily invaded the privacy of city employees and that it would not have been amended without his law firm’s action. Officials in the city Ethics Commission argued that they would have made the changes in the law anyway. And other officials criticized Ring, a wealthy attorney and lobbyist, for demanding the money at a time when the city is financially strapped.

The law firm had originally requested $150,000 under a state law that awards fees to encourage law firms to correct constitutional flaws. The judge rejected a $201,000 fee request by another law firm, this one representing city unions, saying that the firm was obliged to take up the case as part of its regular business and thus did not qualify.