Plaintiffs Awarded $345,000 in ’89 Police Brutality Case : Courts: Judge sides with a group of 26 party-goers who said they were beaten without cause by officers.

A Superior Court judge has sided with a group of 26 party-goers who alleged that they were beaten up without cause by Los Angeles police officers as they attended a baptismal celebration in Arleta, awarding them $345,000 in damages.

After five years of legal wrangling and a two-month trial that heard from more than 50 witnesses, Judge Richard Montes ruled for the plaintiffs. Police executives on Tuesday defended the officers involved, saying that they acted properly and that some officers were injured by violent party-goers. The city attorney’s office has not yet decided whether to appeal.

Men, women and children were clubbed or otherwise assaulted by officers who ordered them to leave the house after responding to neighbors’ complaints of a noisy party in April, 1989, said Leon P. Gilbert, a Woodland Hills lawyer who represented the party-goers. He called it the worst example of police brutality he had seen in years of representing plaintiffs in such cases.

At least 11 party-goers were treated for injuries at eastern San Fernando Valley hospitals after the fracas. Six of them, including two brothers who owned the house, were arrested on charges that were later dropped, according to Gilbert and court testimony in the case.

Photographs taken by a family member after the party showed party-goers with missing teeth and bruised shoulders, arms and legs.

Foothill Division police officers also were injured, police spokesmen said, as they tried to clear people out of a house packed with belligerent party-goers. They said relatives of those being arrested jumped them as they tried to haul suspects away.

Montes issued his decision in an order from the bench March 10. Although he has yet to sign the final judgment, attorneys for both sides said Tuesday that they have accepted this ruling as his final decision and that the signing is a formality. The Los Angeles city attorney’s office--which defended the officers, the Police Department and city officials named in the complaint--and the judge refused to comment on the case until the city decides whether to appeal.

“This shows that the system works, that people who really have been taken advantage of by police authority still have the ability to obtain some type of justice by suing the city,” Gilbert said. “The problem is it takes five years and a tremendous amount of aggravation, anxiety, emotional distress, after these people were beaten and then arrested.”

Police Capt. Val Paniccia, commanding officer of Foothill patrol officers at the time of the incident, said the verdict shows it is “fashionable” for people to sue the police with false allegations of brutality, and for juries and judges then to award them damages.

“I’m sorry the judge made the decision he did, but that’s because he didn’t believe the facts,” Paniccia said. “In my opinion, the officers were totally doing their jobs and nothing else. They were provoked and attacked, and these people then went after us for the lawsuit.”

Paniccia, now commanding officer at the LAPD’s West Valley Division, said one officer also lost a tooth in the fracas and that other officers were punched and hit by party-goers who refused to disperse when officers asked them to.

But Gilbert and the court testimony of party-goers painted a different picture of what happened that night.

The party-goers said that about 30 officers came to the house in the 9800 block of Mercedes Street in Arleta about 10:45 p.m. the night of April 1, ordered that what neighbors said was loud music be turned down and told the crowd to disperse. More than a dozen people attending lived at the house, and several dozen more were guests.

According to court testimony in the case, the music was turned down after police arrived. But the police then ordered everyone to disperse and began forcing them out, said Gilbert. Officers formed lines outside the front door of the house, beating party-goers as they tried to leave, said Gilbert and some of the witnesses and party-goers.

“They are having a baptismal party to celebrate and the police come in like storm troopers and force them all out of their house,” Gilbert said. “People were getting trampled. And (the police) were hitting them with batons, and pushing them and pulling them and grabbing them. One’s head was pounded into a squad car for no reason.”

The city attorney’s office accepted the judgment. “Based on the number of plaintiffs and the number of allegations, I found the award was reasonable,” said Deputy City Atty. Ellen Fawls, the chief defense lawyer.

She said the judge did not find that any of the officers acted with malice, and thus did not award any punitive damages. “As far as who hit who, I don’t think it was clearly established as to whether it was intentional,” she said.

But the judge determined that the police violated the party-goers’ civil rights by acting too aggressively to shut down the party, and so the officers were responsible for the injuries that followed, she said.