Legal Battle Could Be Hard, Costly

Willie L. Williams faces an uphill and expensive court battle if he decides to sue the city over the Los Angeles Police Commission’s decision not to award him another five-year term as police chief, legal experts said Monday.

“I don’t know how he could win,” said James J. Fyfe, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia and the author of seven books on police practices.

In its written decision denying Williams a second term, the Police Commission stressed that it had been given the authority to make the decision “in its discretion” under Charter Amendment F, the ballot measure enacted in 1992.

That measure also specifically changed city regulations to eliminate any property interest that the chief had in the job. “There is no right to be reappointed to a second term,” the commission stressed in its report.

Quite simply, the language of Charter Amendment F means the chief has no claim that his rights to due process of law under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution have been violated, UCLA law professor Michael Asimow said.

“He might make a claim under the due process clause of the California Constitution, which has been interpreted to be more protective than federal law,” Asimow said. But the professor quickly added that he was aware of no case in which the due process provision of the California Constitution had been invoked by a court to overturn the decision of a municipal agency not to renew an employment contract.

Jay H. Grodin, a Los Angeles attorney who represented former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates when Gates attempted to retain his job just before Williams was hired, said the current chief faces a much stiffer battle than Gates did.

“Before Charter Amendment F, to remove the chief or the general manager of any other department, you had to establish good and sufficient cause,” Grodin said. “After Proposition F was passed, the chief’s job became an at-will position,” meaning that the commission has considerably greater latitude in whether or not to retain the chief. And the commission has even more leeway on the issue of whether to rehire the chief when his five-year term expires.

Grodin also said that any legal battle launched by the chief would involve “big bucks. You could easily run up $300,000 [to] $400,000 in costs, including lawyer time, copying costs, depositions and transcripts.” He also stressed that since there is no body of law that has developed on Proposition F, the chief’s lawyers would have to design a case almost from scratch.

Williams has not yet said whether he plans to file a lawsuit. If the chief sued, however, the city would be well represented. It has hired Irell & Manella, a large Century City law firm, to represent the commission. Irell’s efforts would be spearheaded by James N. Adler, who heads the firm’s employment department and previously served as chairman of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.’s labor and employment section and as a law clerk to U.S. Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Assistant City Atty. Fred Merkin said the City Council had appropriated $75,000 for Irell & Manella’s work and that a contract had been drafted which provides that the firm’s partners would be paid $250 an hour, associates $150 an hour and paralegals $70 an hour, all less than the firm’s normal rates.

On Monday, Adler declined to speculate on the possibility of a suit, but he stressed: “The Board [of Police Commissioners] proceeded . . . in a thorough, detailed and thoughtful manner in full compliance with its responsibilities under Charter Amendment F and all other legal obligations.”

Legal experts said they thought that if Williams sued, it was likely that the guts of his claim would be that the commission’s process was unfair. As the commission noted in its report Monday, the chief has been quoted as saying the reappointment process has been “jury-rigged.”

His attorneys--Peter I. Ostroff and Johnnie Griggs, both of whom work at the Los Angeles office of Chicago-based Sidley & Austin--have publicly described the commission’s deliberations as a “kangaroo court.” Moreover, they sent a letter to the city attorney’s office giving seven reasons why the commission “has demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate bias and prejudice” against the chief. That letter has not been released.

However, in a March 4 letter to City Council members Nate Holden and Rita Walters, two of Williams’ supporters, City Atty. James K. Hahn said the earlier letter from the chief’s lawyers “lays no factual foundation for what amounts to a series of allegations.”