Judge Dismisses Charges Against Rights Attorney

Trailblazing civil rights attorney A. Thomas Hunt, accused last year of cheating clients and practicing law without a license, was cleared of all criminal charges Thursday by a Superior Court judge.

Judge Jacqueline Connor dismissed three felony counts of grand theft, saying prosecutors had not proven that Hunt had any intent to steal from clients.

She also tossed out two lesser misdemeanor counts of unlicensed law practice, ruling that they had not been filed by legal deadlines.

The ruling capped a year of fierce legal maneuvering in the complicated criminal case against Hunt--once known as an aggressive and principled lawyer who pioneered the use of civil rights lawsuits to fight discrimination.

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Anthony J. Sousa, said after the court hearing that Connor’s ruling left him disappointed and weighing an appeal.

Former client Howard Bennett, 66, of Playa del Rey, who contends that Hunt took $6,000 from him but then bungled an age discrimination case against the Culver City school system, said after the hearing, “I feel terrible.”

Hunt, 56, declined comment. However, defense attorney Mark J. Werksman, who engineered a three-step strategy that led to the dismissal of the charges, called the ruling “a ray of sunshine.”

“Tom Hunt has done some great things in his life in the past and he’ll do great things again,” Werksman said. “The past few years have been a nightmare, a black cloud that finally appears to be lifting.”

A Harvard Law School graduate, Hunt spent 25 years bringing class-action civil rights suits.

Once, he forced Chippendale’s nightclub to diversify its work force. In another celebrated case, he won an agreement from the Los Angeles County Fire Department to hire more blacks and Latinos until the force’s ethnic makeup mirrored the city’s population. He won a similar deal with the Los Angeles Police Department--after a lawsuit that took seven years and journeyed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Hunt won settlements with port employers that opened several trades to women and minorities for the first time.

In the early 1990s, however, he began drinking heavily, according to court files. His heavy alcohol use, Hunt was quoted as telling one investigator, led him “to use exceptionally poor judgment.”

From August 1991 until December 1992 he was suspended from the State Bar because he had not paid his annual dues, according to Bar records.

After Bennett and other clients pelted the Bar with complaints about Hunt, the lawyer tendered his resignation in November 1993.

In March 1995, Los Angeles prosecutors filed six felony counts against Hunt, three alleging that he stole $15,000 in client fees from 1991 through 1993 and three alleging unlicensed practice of law.

In a separate civil case, Superior Court Judge Alan Haber last April sentenced Hunt to five days in jail for contempt of court--for failing to notify clients that he had given up his law license in late 1993 and for failing to return their fees within 20 days of resigning from the State Bar.

In November, at Werksman’s urging, Connor dismissed one of the theft counts and one of unlicensed practice--on the grounds of double jeopardy because he had already served the five-day jail term.

That left four counts. In January, prosecutors upped it again to six, filing another felony theft charge alleging the loss of $4,000 and another count of unlicensed practice. The latter was quickly dismissed in Municipal Court, however, because it was filed too late.

In March, Werksman successfully argued that the two remaining counts of unlicensed practice should be reduced to misdemeanors, not felonies. And on Thursday, Connor dismissed both those counts because prosecutors had not filed them until March 1995--well beyond the one-year legal limit for bringing misdemeanor charges.

Then she dismissed the three felony theft counts, reasoning that Hunt had never intended to steal because he actually did some legal work for Bennett and others.

Longshoreman and Vietnam veteran Wes Brickner, 44, of San Pedro, claimed he lost the $8,000 fee he paid Hunt for a lawsuit involving veterans employment rights. He said Thursday: “I was in the service for four years, gave my life to my country and this is how they treat me.

“I have no faith in our legal system at all. The only way it works is for the rich. Look at O.J. Simpson. Look at this.”