Class Action Suit Targets Rampart Cases

Police misconduct specialist Stephen Yagman has formed an unusual alliance with a law firm composed of highly regarded civil litigators, and Thursday the new partners filed a federal class action suit on behalf of all people whose civil rights allegedly were violated by the LAPD in the course of the Rampart scandal.

All three of the name partners in Yagman’s new ally--O’Neill, Lysaght & Sun--are former federal prosecutors and their 15-year-old Santa Monica firm has a reputation for success in complex, high-stakes civil litigation.

Four of the firm’s partners served as counsels to the Christopher and Webster commissions, which investigated the LAPD after the 1991 beating of motorist Rodney G. King and after the 1992 riots, respectively.

Yagman now represents eight individuals, who allege in federal lawsuits that their rights were violated by LAPD officers involved in the Rampart corruption scandal.

The Venice-based lawyer and his new partners are attempting to establish a so-called “settlement class” in which the city of Los Angeles would agree to fund a pool of money to be divided by plaintiffs who allege Rampart-related violations of their civil rights, according to attorney Brian C. Lysaght.

Lysaght said he has met several times with ranking officials in the city attorney’s office. “The conversations were detailed and substantive,” though nothing has been agreed to, the lawyer said.

“Discussions have been had with and continue to be underway with the city attorney’s office about agreeing to have one federal judge act as a settlement judge for all Rampart-related litigation to assist in resolving the great majority of cases,” he said.

Plaintiffs who do not want to participate in a class action would be permitted to opt out of the settlement and pursue their cases individually.

As an incentive for other potential claimants to join a so-called “global settlement,” Lysaght said he has urged the city attorney to forgo procedural defenses--such as those involving the statute of limitations--against any plaintiff who enlists in the proposed class.

Yagman argued that both plaintiffs and the city would benefit from a mass settlement. “This would be potentially beneficial to plaintiffs because it will allow them to receive fair and prompt compensation for their injuries and avoid going through a long, hard-fought legal process whose prospects are always uncertain for all parties.” He said the city would gain some certainty over how much it would have to pay out over a period of time and avoid “going into perpetual debt.”

It is difficult to assess the prospects of the initiative at this point. Several other lawyers have filed federal civil suits as well and might advise their clients not to participate.

Mike Qualls, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said that although the office had not yet seen the suit, attorneys in the office’s police division have reached a preliminary conclusion that “Rampart cases are not appropriate for class relief because they involve such varied fact situations.”

In that regard, the U.S. Supreme Court in the past three years has thrown out two massive class action settlements of asbestos litigation on the grounds that the interests of the class members diverged too much for the class to be valid.

Columbia University law professor John C. Coffee Jr., an expert on class actions, said the Rampart initiative might be looked at skeptically by a federal judge because of those decisions.

“The principal problem is [a lack of] factual homogeneity,” Coffee said. “To the extent that there is not a centrally coordinated conspiracy of high-ranking police officers, rather than a loose network of officers who have an understanding that they can break the law, class certification seems inappropriate,” Coffee said.

Nonetheless, Lysaght said he thought that hurdle could be overcome.

Thursday’s suit contends that cases seeking damages for Rampart-related violations are appropriate for a class action because they involve common questions of law and fact as to patterns and practices of defendants from the Police Department and the City Council.

The suit alleges that individuals victimized by Rampart officers were subjected to excessive force, the planting of false evidence, fabrication of evidence, filing of false police reports by officers and perjured testimony by the same officers.

The suit also alleges that the wrongful conduct of the officers “could not have occurred without the participation or deliberate indifference and/or willful blindness of the non-police defendants.”

The named plaintiff in the case is Darryl Fitzpatrick, 34, who according to the suit was arrested on Aug. 14, 1999, and vastly overcharged. The suit states that although Fitzpatrick had less than half an ounce of marijuana in his car, a group of Rampart officers claimed that they found four small bags of marijuana and 22 empty plastic bags in his car.

Fitzpatrick, who was on parole at the time, was charged with a felony count of transporting illegal substances and a felony possession count.

Those charges could have resulted in a sentence of 25 years to life because Fitzpatrick had prior convictions, according to the suit. Consequently, the suit alleges that Fitzpatrick decided to plead guilty--though to the significantly lower charge of driving a vehicle without the owners’ consent. He served three months in jail, according to Yagman, who said his client is still on parole.