Posted on 11/20/2006 6:37:16 PM PST by Omega Man II
Mayor vetoes dog-food settlement
BY KERRY CAVANAUGH Staff Writer
LA Daily News
Article Last Updated:11/20/2006 05:28:52 PM PST
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today vetoed the controversial $2.7 million settlement with a Los Angeles firefighter tricked into eating dog food, after reviewing photos that showed the firefighter had engaged in hazing and pranks himself.
The mayor's veto - his first in office - sends the settlement back to the City Council, which had approved the payout Nov. 8.
"The behavior underlying this case must be eliminated in our city workforce," Villaraigosa said this afternoon. "At the same time, settlements of this magnitude require careful and thorough consideration of all the facts."
The mayor also issued an executive order banning hazing among all city employees and all departments.
Councilman Dennis Zine, who voted against the settlement, said he has "tremendous respect for the fiscal responsiveness of Mayor Villaraigosa."
"His veto of the settlement, along with the new executive directive to the entire city family which he introduced today, will create a new and better atmosphere for all employees of the city of Los Angeles," Zine said in a statement. "Those who attack others should not be rewarded, and the mayor's actions today show an understanding of rational common sense."
The settlement stemmed from an incident in the Westchester fire station in which 19-year veteran Tennie Pierce was served a plate of spaghetti with dog food in it.
He ate a few bites, noticed his colleagues laughing and demanded to know what they had put in his food. They wouldn't say until later, when another colleague admitted to adding dog food.
Pierce said the incident was sparked by a volleyball game earlier that day when he'd bragged, "You guys keep feeding the Big Dog," which was his nickname.
But he felt the prank was offensive, humiliating and took on a particularly malicious character because he is African-American and his colleagues were not, according to a lawsuit he filed last year.
The council initially approved the settlement because members believed it was too risky to fight the case in court.
But after the settlement, several photos were made public that showed Pierce involved in pranks and hazing. The council still couldn't muster enough votes to reconsider the settlement.
Now, with the mayor's veto, the council needs 10 votes to re-enact the settlement.
kerry.cavanaugh@dailynews.com
(213) 978-0390
Good to reverse the settlement.
Bad that he will be on an anti-"hazing" crusade.
Stupid thing to do, but he did not notice dog food in the meal? Either the cook is very good, or his meals normally taste like dog food anyway.
Seems to me that the victim was a little too thin skined to bear the brunt of the same tricks he pulled.
Not sure, but from the smell of canned dog food, it would be hard to cover up in your average human meal.
These settlements for practical jokes are WAY beyond common sense.....
Did the "jury of his peers" include other dog food eaters????
Oh, he did far worse. He even strapped a white firefighter to a gurney and shaved his genitals.
Was it the plaintiff's brother-in-law?
As a kid, I wondered why the dog liked Purina Dog Chow as much as he did, so I tried it myself. I found it dry, very crunchy, and bland. However, for 2.7 million, I'd consider eating a whole bowl of it if I could add some milk to wash it down.
A lawsuit gets filed against the City of LA because of something which happened in a city run hospital, police department, fire department or a freaking meter maid. The lawsuit gets served on the law firm which handles the City (Clark & Trevithick was the largest one and they got to represent LA in the tobacco lawsuit and it netted them $250M!!!). The lawyers at the firm review the complaint, assign an attorney to the case and decide immediately how bad the case is. The policy for the city is NOT to settle cases, nuisance cases or serious ones. If you settle quickly, you are made for a mark by all of the trial lawyers and they will bring any piece of crap to court knowing that you will pay them off at least something without them having to do any work.
Once the lawsuit has been filed and the atty reviews it, it is brought to the attention of the City Manager and interview are arranged with the appropriate defendants to determine how f'ed up the facts in the case are. After a round of investigation, the case is presented (along with the few dozen others filed that month) to the City Council along with the recommendations by the law firm as to which cases they need to seek settlement on and which ones they should simply ignore or force the plaintiff to actually attempt to bring the action to trial (which scares off the rookies and the trial lawyers who don't have adequate credit). The City Council typically listens to the recommendations of the lawyers after looking over the budget for the quarter. Some plaintiffs get lucky because its of budget situations and they get paid off quickly just to go away.
The cases which involve racism or get into the media (via professional demogogues like Steven Yagman who donates tons of money to democrats who end up on the City Council) aren't settled on financial issues, they are settled on 'appearance' issues. Any time you can make a claim of racism and your client is an illegal mexican or black and you got the local media to pimp your cause and there is sympathy for you (like, the LAPD beat the crap out of him and it was videotapes and put on YouTube) then you get to essentially extort the LA City Council and the financial value of the case gets thrown out the window. The members of the city council fear, more than anything in life, that they will refuse to pay some pathetic bastard like Rodney King and it will become a campaign issue next November and some professional demogogue like Gloria Allred ends up running against them for their City Council seat. Soooooo, they pay off anybody who happens to be a member of any of the many special interest groups so that they don't risk seeming to be insensitive to those special interest demogogues (NAACP, Urban League, LULAC, MALDEF, AFL-CIO, ACLU, etc). It is the easiest case you can possibly get as a trial lawyer - a black guy who the victim of a practical joke and believes somebody yelled 'nigger' while he was a child.
There is absolutely no value given to the merits of the case which would be litigated. The only value is how uncomfortable individual city council members will get having to explain to their demogogue base as to why they didn't pony up $2.7M for such an atrocious act of racism. The fact that the Mayor has vetoed this decision basically means that he is laying down the gauntlet to the black demogogues. The message is clear: You no longer run this city and we no longer need to pay you off anymore since there are enough Mexican living here to keep me in office whether you guy vote for me, vote for the GOP or don't vote at all. Los Angeles hispanics know control the democrat party and they no longer needs blacks, jews, asians, gays or feminists. The would kick the union to the curb except that is where all of the mexicans are employed. Its a whole new world and its a lightly shade of brown.
Wherever there is a deep pocket, a Lawyer's hand is always nearby. Liberals HATE success, and penalize success through the courts.
Wherever there is a deep pocket, a Lawyer's hand is always nearby. Liberals HATE success, and penalize success through the courts.
What a conniving crooked creep!
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