Dismissal of Hundreds of Cases Sought

Over the last week, Los Angeles County Public Defender Michael Judge has sought to have hundreds of cases filed by Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo dismissed on the grounds that Delgadillo is not a qualified for the job.

The argument, which judges have rejected more than 600 times in the last three days, is based on the fact that Delgadillo let his membership in the State Bar of California lapse while he worked for former Mayor Richard Riordan.

According to the City Charter, the city attorney “must be qualified to practice in all courts in the state and must have been so qualified for at least five years immediately preceding his or her election.”

Despite Delgadillo’s undergraduate degree from Harvard, his law degree from Columbia University and his years as a practicing attorney, the county’s public defenders are arguing that because his bar status was inactive from 1995 to 1999 he has no business acting as city attorney.

Officials in Delgadillo’s office called the premise absurd and frivolous and accused the public defender of trying to hinder the criminal justice system. Delgadillo could not be reached for comment.

But Chief Deputy Public Defender Robert Kalunian said his office intends to continue filing motions to dismiss charges ranging from assault to drunk driving. The city attorney prosecutes all misdemeanors in Los Angeles, about 90,000 last year. More than half of the accused are represented by the public defender’s office.

“We felt we had an ethical obligation to assert the rights of our clients.... We are seeking to prevent him and his office from prosecuting misdemeanors because he is not authorized,” Kalunian said. “I believe our position is very well-founded based on the requirements of the Los Angeles City Charter and applicable case law.”

Kalunian said his office got the idea for the novel strategy after reading about Delgadillo’s bar status in the legal newspaper the Metropolitan News-Enterprise. A Jan. 9 column said that Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino, who finished third in the 2001 city attorney’s race, was the rightful officeholder. (The second-place vote-getter, former City Councilman Mike Feuer, was also on inactive bar status while on the City Council.)

Responding last week to the article, a Delgadillo spokesman called the argument ridiculous and cited an unsigned opinion from then-City Atty James K. Hahn that inactive bar status did not disqualify a person from running for city attorney.

So far, judges have sided with Delgadillo. In a ruling issued Tuesday and echoed hundreds of times since by other judges, Superior Court Judge Richard E. Rico found that the public defender’s motions were not an appropriate forum for trying to resolve whether Delgadillo was qualified to hold office. The proper method, the judge said, is to file a formal request with the state attorney general. Luis Li, chief deputy of the city attorney’s criminal division, said his office may seek formal sanctions against the public defender for “repeatedly filing frivolous claims.”

“It’s a big headache for the entire system,” he said. “They’re wasting money on this. It’s a complete waste.”

Kalunian conceded that the motions are costing money, but said attempts to negotiate a settlement with the city attorney to file one motion that would cover all cases had not been successful.

He added that his office believes it has a legitimate case, and is planning an appeal to the appellate division of Los Angeles County Superior Court.

USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who headed a commission that wrote the current City Charter, said he has researched the question since the Metropolitan-News raised the issue and concluded that Delgadillo is qualified to hold office.

“He was qualified by virtue of the fact that he was a member in good standing of the state bar, albeit a member on inactive status,” Chemerinsky said. Hahn, who is now mayor, looked into the matter in 2001 at Feuer’s request. Although the written opinion was never formally sent out, a top Hahn deputy confirmed that the advice was given to Feuer verbally.

Tim McOsker, who is the mayor’s chief of staff and was a top deputy to Hahn in the city attorney’s office, said he and Hahn stand by their advice.

“We carefully researched the question. We prepared a draft letter and we provided the advice orally, which is a common practice,” McOsker said. He said Feuer was satisfied with the verbal advice and did not request a written opinion. Meanwhile, the wave of motions continues. Last week, when the public defenders began bringing them, they provoked a brief period of confusion and prompted judges to postpone a few cases.

But by Friday afternoon, the demurrers had become a routine part of arraignment hearings in the city.

“The court is overruling the demurrer on the two grounds in this written decision by Judge Rico,” Commissioner Nancy S. Gast said Friday afternoon, speaking as if by rote. “I concur in his decision and with his reasoning.”

Peering out from behind a glassed-off holding pen, the handful of defendants seemed unaware of the legal dispute.

In the gallery, the friend of a woman being arraigned laughed when he learned what the public defender was doing.

“I think that’s great,” Lamont Jones said.