Thursday, October 20, 2016
Page 3
Judge Mitchell Continues on Winning Spree in C.A.
Panel Upholds Restitution Award Based on Victim’s Loss of Business
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Court of Appeal for this district has held that a restitition order properly included amounts for the victim’s lost business income, with that affirmance of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daviann L. Mitchell constituting the judge’s fifth pat-on-the-back by an appeals court in one week’s period, all in unrelated cases.
The appellant in the latest case, decided on Monday, had pled no contest to making criminal threats. Those threats included utterances to the victim, Lindsey Bianco, that he would inflict great bodily harm on her and would kill her, and attempting to barge into her home in early morning hours, ripping a sliding glass door from a frame.
Scared, she abandoned the house and took up residency in a hotel. By doing so, she lost income from operating a child care center in her home.
Bianco testified as to the amount of her loss over a six-month period, and Mitchell assessed the amount at $13,800. The defendant, Samuel G. Cuevas, appealed.
Writing for Div. Six, Presiding Justice Arthur Gilbert said that Mitchell found Bianco to be “very credible” and observed that “credibility was exclusively a matter for the trier of fact.”
He noted that it has been held that the restitution statute is to be applied “broadly and liberally.”
The case, which was not certified for publication, is People v. Cuevas, B269023.
Last week, Mitchell was affirmed in three opinions on Oct. 11—though there was a remand in one of those cases for the purpose of her specifying the statutes under which penalties and fees were imposed—and one opinion on Oct. 12. There were no outright reversals.
Copyright 2016, Metropolitan News Company