Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

 

Page 7

 

PERSPECTIVES (Column)

Los Angeles Times Botches Report of Delgadillo Controversy

Associated Press Parrots Error

 

By ROGER M. GRACE

 

The Los Angeles Times has errantly reported that judges of the county’s Superior Court have, in more than 600 rulings, rejected the contention that Los Angeles City Attorney Rockard J. “Rocky” Delgadillo lacks the legal qualifications for his office. In truth, the gist of the rulings was that the merits of the contention cannot be reached at this time.

To its discredit, the Associated Press issued a report echoing the Times’ misstatements.

Over the past week-and-a-half, the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office has demurred to each new misdemeanor complaint on the ground that Delgadillo does not lawfully hold office. A number of judges, acting in reliance on a memo by the Superior Court Planning and Research Unit, last week overruled demurrers on the ground that entitlement to hold office is not subject to collateral attack, and may only be tested in a proceeding in quo warranto.

The contention that Delgadillo unlawfully holds office, first put forth here on Jan. 9, might ultimately be judicially rejected should a quo warranto action be brought. But the Times has reported a judicial determination as having been made that hasn’t been.

In fact, scuttlebutt is that judges are generally of the view that Delgadillo does, indeed, lack the legal qualifications for the office of city attorney in light of his inactive status during part of the five-year period preceding his election in 2001. City Charter §270 provides:

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

That language is not perceived as ambiguous.

The Times ran its story on Page One of the California section on Saturday. It was inaccurate and slanted.

The article, by Times staff writers Jessica Garrison and Patrick McGreevy, began:

“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 qualified for the job.”

So far, so good. However, the article continued:

“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.”

False. The argument that Delgadillo is not “qualified for the job” had not been rejected in those scads of cases. A procedural infirmity was found to preclude a ruling on the merits.

Was this distinction simply not appreciated by the writers? No. It was understood. Later in the story—right after repetition that “[s]o far, judges have sided with Delgadillo” on the issue of his entitlement to hold office—it was said:

“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.”

That speck of accuracy was inadequate to set straight misconceptions appearing immediately before it, or created by the second paragraph—especially when the second paragraph was read in conjunction with the smaller headline, or “deck,” under the main headline. The deck read: “Chief public defender challenges Delgadillo’s authority. Judges side with the city attorney.”

The explanation did not clearly spell out that Delgadillo’s eligibility for office has not been adjudicated.

Indeed, the information appeared to be supplemental, rather than being intended to negate what came before. A reader of a news story is hardly accustomed to verbiage in the middle of a story being intended to correct earlier utterances in the same story. It might reasonably be thought that if a reporter, while drafting a story, realizes an error appears in an account, the error will be deleted rather than being retained with corrective matter being inserted below it.

What’s more, the two sentences in the middle of the story which accurately described the ruling were far less apt to be noticed than what appeared in the second paragraph. This is especially so inasmuch as those two sentences appeared on a “jump” on B-20, while the first four paragraphs were on page B-1.

 Thus, the reader was certain to be left with the false impression that in a mass of rulings, judges rebuffed the contention that Delgadillo unlawfully holds office, though no such rulings were made—and, it is evident, the Times writers knew that.

I would think that the editors of The Times should be concerned over this deception.

The Associated Press, which has a right to pick up stories from member newspapers, derived its dispatch on Saturday from the Times story. It was similarly bollixed. Here’s what AP reported:

LOS ANGELES (AP)—The Los Angeles County public defender’s office said it will continue seeking dismissal of hundreds of cases on grounds that Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is unqualified to prosecute.

Judges have rejected the argument more than 600 times in the past week. But Chief Deputy Public Defender Robert Kalunian said the office intends to keep seeking dismissal of charges ranging from assault to drunk driving.

The public defender argues that Delgadillo is unqualified under the City Charter to submit the cases because he allowed his membership in the State Bar of California to lapse from 1995 to 1999, when he worked for former Mayor Richard Riordan.

A spokesman for Delgadillo said last week that the argument was ridiculous.

Judges repeatedly have ruled against the public defender’s motions. The city attorney’s criminal division may seek sanctions for filing frivolous claims, said Luis Li, chief deputy of the division.

The AP story reflects obliviousness as to the true facts.

The Times story contained further matter to which exception may be taken. While the third paragraph merely quoted from the City Charter, the fourth paragraph (appearing on the first page) read:

“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.”

That sentence is of a form acceptable in editorials, columns, letters to the editor, and other opinion pieces—but not news stories. There’s an independent clause setting forth a contention, preceded by a dependent clause which “pre-rebuts” what’s to follow.

Moreover, the pre-rebuttal was founded on ignorance. The City Charter specifies that in order to run for city attorney, the candidate must have been “qualified to practice in all the courts of the state” for the past five years. As discussed in previous columns, the word “qualified” in that context does not connote general “fitness”; it means meeting the legal requisites. A person is not legally qualified to practice law during periods when the person is not an active member of the State Bar, in good standing; to do so would be a misdemeanor and a contempt.

The fact that a person received an undergraduate degree from Harvard, a law degree from Columbia, and had been in practice for years would not render that person legally qualified to practice law if the person had been disbarred, suspended (whether as as discipline or based on failure to pay dues or to meet MCLE requirements), placed on involuntarily inactive status because of disability, or, as in Delgadillo’s case, if the person had voluntary assumed inactive status.

A troubling aspect of what has occurred is the filing by the Office of City Attorney of an attachment to the memoranda of points and authorities in opposition to the demurrers. “Exhibit 1” is a letter purportedly sent Feb. 23, 2000, by then-City Attorney James K. Hahn to then-City Councilmember Michael Feuer—who, like Delgadillo, had been on inactive bar status. It provided an assurance that it was permissible for him to run for city attorney.

Yet, the letter was not signed and was not on a letterhead—which would reasonably put one on inquiry that it might merely have been a draft prepared by a deputy which was not adopted by Hahn and not sent.

Indeed, Hahn’s office confirmed last week that the letter “was not signed or sent by then-City Attorney Hahn.”

Delgadillo’s office represented to judges in hundreds of cases last week that there had been an official written pronouncement by Hahn, as city attorney, as to the meaning of the charter provision—that pronouncement being, by virtue of Hahn’s office, “persuasive and entitled to consideration and respect.” Judges would foreseeably have assumed that the City Attorney’s Office would know whether that letter constituted an opinion promulgated by the office.

As it happened, the issue of whether Delgadillo was qualified for office or not was not determined by the judges. Nonetheless, there was a false representation by the Office of City Attorney which could have affected such a determination.

Perhaps the misrepresentation stemmed from sheer sloppiness—a failure to make an effort to ascertain if the facially suspect letter had actually been issued. Maybe there was knowing deceit. In either event, it’s hardly a matter to be ignored.

Yet, Garrison and McGreevy readily accepted the explanation from City Hall that the written opinion existed but was simply not mailed. The duo wrote:

“Hahn, who is now mayor, looked into the matter in 2001 [sic] 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.”

I don’t doubt that the advice was rendered orally to Feuer by somebody in the City Attorney’s Office. The point that eluded the Times reporters—or was ignored by them if they grasped it—is that Delgadillo’s office made a material, false representation to judges that a written opinion had been promulgated by Hahn when it hadn’t.

It appears that the Times reporters were snowed when they should have been scrutinizing.

 

Copyright 2004, Metropolitan News Company