Law Firm Sued by Fired Attorney

A former Los Angeles County prosecutor has alleged in a civil lawsuit that he was wrongly fired from his job at a corporate law firm for speaking his mind on the fate of a corruption probe.

Former Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew Dalton said in the suit, filed last week, that he was fired by Howrey Simon Arnold & White last fall after he was quoted in the Los Angeles Times voicing outrage over the actions of his former boss, Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley.

In the article, Dalton said Cooley failed to pursue public corruption allegations that prominent lobbyist and businessman Art M. Gastelum had bribed public officials and prosecutors. The allegations emerged during the district attorney’s investigation into the financing and construction of the unfinished Belmont Learning Center.

The day the article appeared, according to the suit, Howrey Simon’s then-managing partner, Thomas Nolan, told Dalton that the remarks could harm the firm’s relationship with Cooley at a critical time.

Cooley’s office was then conducting an unrelated investigation of alleged political money laundering involving a firm controlled by a Howrey Simon client, real estate developer Alan Casden. The next day, the suit alleged, another of the law firm’s partners told him he was fired from his $175,000-a-year job.

The district attorney’s office later filed felony charges against a vice president of Casden Properties and some subcontractors, accusing them of trying to get around campaign finance limits by soliciting donations from friends and relatives and then illegally reimbursing them.

Dalton had worked at Howrey Simon for about a month, during which time his only assignment was to research “which countries did not have extradition treaties with the United States on behalf of a client who faced prosecution in a securities fraud matter,” his suit alleged.

Dalton said in the lawsuit he had “serious concerns about the ethics” of that activity because it could have helped the firm’s client flee from justice.

He said he expressed his concerns to three of the firm’s partners, but did the research anyway.

Although a Howrey Simon spokeswoman declined to comment on Dalton’s lawsuit, she said that the firm had “acted properly” toward him.