Recently in Verdicts and Settlements Category
A Hawthorne couple claimed Hawthorne police officers use brutal tactics while answering a loud noise complaint. Anthony Goodrow said officers broke his jaw and didn't give him proper medical treatment while his then girlfriend, Karla Goodrow, maintains she was falsely arrested.
We'll have a full report later on dailybreeze.com and in The Daily Breeze.
In 2003, Sara Plowden claimed Torrance officers pulled her over for a traffic stop and physically accosted her, all because she was black. She sued, claiming civil rights violations, and a federal court jury has ruled against her. Here's today's story.
While her attorney, Thomas Beck, could not be reached for comment today on this story, he previously said that evidence of police abuse in his client's case are bolstered by evidence produced in other lawsuits against the department, including a $6.5 million settlement the city paid to the family of a 19-year-old San Pedro girl who was killed in a 1984 crash with an off-duty sergeant.
Beck, a Los Alamitos attorney, is well-known to local police agencies. He's represented numerous people in excessive force and civil rights lawsuits against departments that include Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Lynwood and Los Angeles.
Among them is Terry Vermeulen Keith of City News Service, who spends more time in the courtroom than even Denise. She's covered everything you can imagine -- from celebrity cases to the most violent crimes in L.A. Although she doesn't often get her name into the paper, a great deal of her work runs here in various forms in the Daily Breeze.
Another honoree is photographer Nick Ut of Associated Press, who is receiving a lifetime achievement award.
He's responsible for taking one of the most famous photos in the world -- the shot of 9-year-old Kim Phuc running from a misdirected napalm bomb that dropped on her home during the Vietnam War.Here's a slightly shortened SPJ press release: (The dinner's in May)
The Distinguished Journalist honorees are Paul Pringle of the Los Angeles Times, Terri Vermeulen Keith of City News Service, John Schwada of KTTV Fox 11, and Frank Stoltze of 89.3-KPCC. Kevin Roderick of LAObserved is the first recipient of the chapter's Distinguished Work in New Media Award. Thomas Newton and Jim Ewert, of the California Newspaper Publishers Association, will receive the chapter's Freedom of Information Award and Nick Ut, Pulitzer-winning photographer with the Associated Press, will receive a special Lifetime Achievement Award.
SPJ/LA presents Distinguished Journalist Awards to members of the profession who demonstrate good news judgment, a strong sense of ethics and a passion for getting the story right. Honorees are journalists who have achieved a record of accomplishments over the course of several years. For the past three decades, the chapter has recognized reporters, editors and photographers in print and broadcast journalism. In 1997, the chapter began honoring journalists in four categories: television, radio, newspapers with a circulation of less than 100,000 and newspapers with a circulation of 100,000 or more.
The Distinguished Work in New Media award is given to a journalist who uses the new media's unique characteristics and capabilities while striving to uphold traditional journalism's highest standards of honesty, accuracy, responsibility and accountability.
Newton and Ewert are being honored for their efforts in increase government transparency and improve and protect First Amendment freedoms. Ut, who is best known for his iconic photo of a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack, is being honored with a special award for his more than 40 years of photojournalism and his contributions to the profession.
Cletus Schmidt had no warning that a remote highway near Joshua Tree National Park was coming to an end, and crashed into a rock-hard embankment on Jan. 6, 2006. The collision left him a paraplegic dependent on a ventilator.
On Monday, a Riverside jury ordered the state Dept. of Transportation to pay Schmidt and his wife, Marlene Schmidt, $11.6 million because the agency failed to maintain safety features that were in place to warn motorists that the road was coming to an end. It turned out that there were eight crashes at that same T-intersection of highways 62 and 177 in the 21 months before Schmidt's wreck.
Schmidt was represented by Hermosa Beach attorney and Palos Verdes resident Albro Lundy III, who grew up with the elderly couple's four children, attending St. John Fisher and Rolling Hills High schools together. When Lundy's father died at age 11, Schmidt stepped-in as a father figure. They became close, and Schmidt stood by Lundy's side when he got married 25 years ago. In a press release, Schmidt said: "What goes around, comes around. When Albro was little, we took care of him. Now he's taking care of us." Lundy, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor during the course of the litigation, was assisted by attorneys Joe Barrett, Norm Coe and Gary Dordick.
I'm working on a full story about the case.
A Los Angeles jury has awarded an Iranian-American man about $14.9 million for asbestos exposure that caused a terminal case of malignant mesotheliomoa. He worked at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo in the 1980s, but his exposure to the asbestos occurred prior to that in Tehran, Iran. Amanaollah Shahabi was too ill to hear the verdict himself, and is hospitalized.
About the Blogger
Larry Altman has covered crime in the South Bay since 1990. He's seen it all - the missing model who turned up dead in the desert, the wives found dead in trunks, the high-school coaches who get a little too close to their players. He drives his young colleagues nuts with his "I remember when" stories. He welcomes your tips and observations about the present, and you can mix in a little Lakers basketball talk if you like.
E-mail Larry at larry.altman@dailybreeze.com.
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