Children Offer to Drop Suit in Robber’s Death

The children of slain North Hollywood bank robber Emil Matasareanu are willing to drop their civil rights lawsuit against the city and two police officers provided the officers are barred from countersuing for malicious prosecution, their lawyer said Monday.

“It’s time to move on,” attorney Brian Lysaght said outside federal court after a hearing before U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder.

A federal jury earlier this year deadlocked on allegations that Matasareanu was denied medical care and allowed to bleed to death in the street after he was captured. A retrial is set for October.

Wearing body armor and firing automatic weapons, Matasareanu, 30, and Larry E. Phillips Jr., 26, engaged in a 44-minute running gunfight with police, shown on live television, after robbing a Bank of America branch Feb. 28, 1997.

Phillips was shot and killed. Eleven police officers and six civilians were wounded.

Lysaght, who recently joined police-abuse lawyer Stephen Yagman in representing the Matasareanu children, said that another trial could result in the same outcome as the first one.

He coupled his motion to dismiss the case with a request for a judicial finding that the children had probable cause to sue Det. James Vojtecky and Officer John Futrell, both now retired. Such a ruling would prevent the officers from countersuing on grounds of malicious prosecution.

No deal, Futrell’s lawyer, Bradley C. Gage, said Monday. Gage said he is eager to see the case dismissed. But he added, “The cost to my client has been horrible.” He said Futrell is out “a couple hundred thousand dollars” in legal fees.

Gage said he would be willing to waive the right to sue if the city agrees to pay Futrell’s legal bills.

Los Angeles routinely provides free legal counsel to police officers sued in connection with their duties. Futrell instead hired Gage after refusing to be represented by a lawyer from the city attorney’s office or from a panel of outside counsel used when conflicts of interest arise.

In a memo filed in court last week, Lysaght said Gage “seems not to recognize at all that it is both inappropriate and unethical to attempt to hold a federal action hostage for payment of his legal fees--fees to which he is clearly not entitled.”

Assistant City Atty. Don Vincent, who represented Vojtecky in the monthlong trial, said his client would waive any right to countersue, though he would oppose any finding that the children had probable cause for their action.

Gage said that if he were to file a countersuit, he would sue the lawyers but not Matasareanu’s children.

“They are just innocent parties being used by Mr. Yagman for his own purposes,” Gage said.

At Monday’s hearing, Snyder directed all the lawyers in the case to try to settle their differences over terms of the proposed dismissal. She said she would ask veteran federal Judge Matthew Byrne to assist them.

Barring a meeting of the minds among the lawyers, Snyder said she would resolve the issue herself.