City Settles With Athlete’s Widow Over LAPD Raid

A good week to settle up . . . An Orson Welles legal boomlet? . . . Heavy metal lipstick.

A woman’s home is her castle, even when it is filled with partying teenagers.

Judy Pace-Flood, widow of the late St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood, underscored that point while winning a $200,000-plus settlement in a federal case involving a party, a ride-along television crew and an illegal police raid of her Baldwin Hills abode.

After cops and cameras burst into her house July 13, 1997, Pace-Flood filed suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, demanding $10 million from the city, Telemax Entertainment and Robert Hauck, the Los Angeles Police Department sergeant who led the raid.

A $125,000 settlement payment from the city, added to a $75,000 check from Telemax’s insurance company, will make the case go away, according to a memo from the city attorney’s office. Financial terms of the settlement involving Hauck were not disclosed.

The police, responding to an anonymous and apparently unfounded 911 call about a fight involving a gun, were accompanied by a crew from the Spanish language show “Placas.”

During pretrial motions, Judge Howard Matz agreed that the warrantless entry was illegal. He also said a jury might well find the defendants liable for trespassing.

“Under normal circumstances, these cases are settled confidentially,” said Pace-Flood’s attorney, Edward J. Slizewski. “But because of the city’s involvement, Judy Pace-Flood can say she brought a wrong to court to seek redress and has been, to a great degree, vindicated.”

TRUTH OR DARE: DARE, a.k.a. Drug Awareness Resistance Education, is looking to settle its defamation suit against Stephen Glass, the too-good-to-be-true journalistic prodigy who admitted making up parts of magazine stories, including unflattering pieces about the Culver City-based anti-drug program.

Glass’ articles about DARE appeared in two magazines, the New Republic, which apologized for its story, and Rolling Stone, which stood by the piece it ran. DARE’s lawyer, Skip Miller, said the group is considering suits against both magazines.

Miller confirmed that a settlement with Glass is in the works and would involve a “substantial monetary component,” a letter of apology and “truthful and factual” information about the magazines’ editing and fact-checking methods.

A TOUCH OF LITIGATION: The daughter of the late, great Orson Welles is asking Los Angeles Superior Court to bar Universal Studios from promoting a newly edited version of her father’s 1958 classic, “A Touch of Evil,” as a director’s cut.

Beatrice Welles accuses the studio of “trading on” her father’s legend by falsely stating that the film had been restored to his original vision when the edited version is based only on his letters of complaint to the studio over changes made in the original.

She points out that Welles died long before the film was re-edited. His protest letters, she asserts, “were only intended to make less objectionable the violence the studio had done to his artistic creation,” court papers say. No immediate comment from Universal.

OW, THAT HURT: Once upon a time, the aforementioned Orson Welles and a woman named Oja Kodar wrote a screenplay called “The Big Brass Ring.” Motion picture producer Jon Shapiro says he acquired the rights and struck a deal with Millennium Films a decade ago to make the movie. It was his dream project, attorney Joseph P. Costa says.

Now Shapiro is alleging that Millennium producer George Hickenlooper and writer Kodar used actor William Hurt to hijack the movie project.

Shapiro claims in his Superior Court fraud and breach-of-contract suit that the defendants lied to him about not being able to sign Hurt to the film. Hurt earlier had expressed interest but had a scheduling conflict, court papers say.

When Hurt became available, Shapiro charges, no one told him, so he let his option expire. Hurt was signed shortly thereafter. The project is moving forward again, this time avec Hurt but sans Shapiro. He seeks $5 million in damages.

A spokesman for Millennium could not be reached.

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Times staff writer Beth Shuster contributed to this column.