The Case of the Legal Eagle and Perhaps Some Chickens

Attorney Skip Miller paces around the courtroom with the quick, spare movements of a cat, an unobtrusive but dominating presence as he defends the city of Los Angeles in a lawsuit that is part of the tangled legacy of Robert Kennedy’s 1968 assassination.

Suing the city for $2 million is Scott Enyart, who says the Los Angeles Police Department confiscated, and then lost, pictures he took of the assassination while on assignment for the Fairfax High School newspaper.

The photographs, Enyart says, are worth money to him and may shed light on a killing that has fascinated conspiracy buffs for the last 28 years. The city contends that it returned all of Enyart’s pictures to him and that he never took photographs of the assassination.

Despite the Kennedy connection, the case seems like a simple lawsuit over lost property, about as complicated as a claim against an airline for missing luggage. So why is Los Angeles paying $225 an hour to Miller, a Century City courtroom star, instead of letting a deputy city attorney do the job for about a quarter of the cost?

Is it because the city is trying to cover up failures in the Kennedy investigation, as Enyart charges? Or did City Atty. Jim Hahn bring in Skip Miller from Century City because the city attorney’s office isn’t up to the job?

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First of all, this case is more complicated than the usual property loss dispute.

This was apparent in the Civic Center courtroom this week as Enyart described the scene in the Ambassador Hotel when Kennedy was shot after his victory speech the night he won the California Democratic presidential primary.

Enyart is a tall man of 43, with a thin, intense face and sandy hair combed over his forehead. After high school, he became a professional photographer and has shot covers for TV Guide and record albums. He now is a special-effects man for the movies.

Enyart said he’d followed Kennedy into the Ambassador pantry after the speech and climbed up on a table to take pictures. Kennedy was in his viewfinder when shots were fired. “When he fell, he fell from my viewfinder,” Enyart said.

No doubt courtroom spectators above a certain age must have been gripped by memories of that night. I was. I flashed back to where I was working, in the Los Angeles office of the Associated Press. Moments after Kennedy was shot, AP reporter Bob Thomas was on the phone from the Ambassador with the news. How do you know, an editor asked. Because, Thomas said, he saw the blood coming from Kennedy’s head.

I was dispatched to the Ambassador, but when I saw an ambulance speeding east on Wilshire Boulevard, I ordered the cab driver to follow it. We ended up at Central Receiving Hospital where I watched Kennedy carried from the ambulance. A few days later, with Kennedy headed east for burial and my work done, I was consumed with fury and grief at the way the democratic process had been thwarted.

What if such emotions are shared by the Enyart jury, a downtown panel composed of racially mixed working-class and middle-class Angelenos, some of whom may well have admired the late senator? They could be influenced by charges of LAPD incompetence or malfeasance in the assassination investigation.

The judge, Commissioner Emilie H. Elias, has ruled against efforts by Enyart’s legal team to reopen the investigation. Even so, as Miller began his cross-examination Tuesday, he faced the task of keeping the emotions of the assassination out of the courtroom. This game had to be played on his court and on his terms, or else the city could lose.

Although Miller has fought many tough cases in more than 20 years of practice, he still appears a bit boyish and deceptively polite. “Hello, Mr. Enyart,” he said before asking his first question.

Then Miller turned mean, heaping scorn on Enyart’s claim that he had shot three rolls of film that night, including the pictures in the pantry.

“You’re not saying three rolls just to win this lawsuit?” he asked, trying to suggest to the jury that the assassination pictures never existed.

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The question remains: Why couldn’t someone from the city attorney’s office have done this job? Assistant City Atty. Edmund E. Fimbres, who is also working on the case, said Miller was hired because the case involves a claim of “intellectual property loss”--Enyart’s pictures. Miller is an expert in that side of the law.

Maybe so, but Miller’s also known as a talented, all-purpose trial lawyer. The last time I encountered him in a courtroom he was successfully defending Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden against a sexual harassment lawsuit, for which his law firm was paid $800,000.

City Atty. Hahn offered a more plausible reason for hiring Miller. “This case had a lot of potential for things going wrong,” he said. “People start to believe there was a giant conspiracy covering up the assassination. It was important to emphasize the credibility of the Los Angeles Police Department.”

Miller was hired because he is a top trial lawyer and the case is too big for the city, and the LAPD, to lose.

But surely, there are Skip Millers somewhere among the city attorney’s 358 lawyers, waiting to star in a big case. Why doesn’t Hahn give them a chance? They, and importantly, we taxpayers deserve it.