update on ladwp state bar investigation
the la times followed up on my reporting. so what are these attorneys in for?
I’ve been saying for a while now that Mike Feuer, now the former city attorney, has been the subject of a big State Bar investigation into the collusive LADWP litigation that happened while he was in office. There have been a couple investigations, but the one going on right now is the most serious one. A couple months ago I reported that the bar’s investigation includes 10 attorneys, many of them former city lawyers who were involved with the city playing both sides of the high-profile billing lawsuit. Along with Knock LA, I asked the State Bar to confirm its investigation in light of its new post-Girardi rebrand of disclosing pending investigations in order to protect members of the public. But they wouldn’t confirm it. However, Feuer himself confirmed the investigation to Matt Hamilton and Harriet Ryan of the LA Times as part of a larger story over the holidays about the bar and Girardi’s legacy (emphasis mine).
The agency also has an ongoing probe of former L.A. City Atty. Mike Feuer and others in connection with an extortion and collusion scheme involving lawyers at the Department of Water & Power. Paul Paradis, who served as special counsel for the DWP and pleaded guilty to bribery earlier this year, wrote in a bankruptcy court filing that he is cooperating with Cardona’s office in investigations of at least 10 DWP-connected attorneys initiated this year. He said they include Feuer and former congressman and DWP commissioner Mel Levine. Feuer confirmed the investigation, adding, “I’m completely confident they will determine there’s no issue here.” Levine said the bar has not informed him that he’s under investigation.
That’s a pretty short, vague response from Feuer. So what is the State Bar concerned with, exactly? What would they want to know about with regard to Feuer? There is the big issue of whether Feuer had knowledge of and authorized the filing of the Jones billing lawsuit against his own client, the city of Los Angeles. Suing yourself? Who does that? According to the 600-page, court-issued Special Master’s report into LADWP, which the State Bar said it would review, Feuer and city lawyers at highest levels of the city attorney’s office “all knew most or all of this three-part plan.” The three-part plan included blaming in the media the consulting mega firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) over the rollout of the messy LADWP billing system, suing PwC, and making all the other lawsuits the city was facing go away by manufacturing the fake Jones lawsuit via handpicked opponents. Ultimately, the report found that a number of city lawyers, in conjunction with private lawyers, engaged in “dishonesty, deceit, and collusion” concerning their ethical duties to plaintiff Antwon Jones. These lawyers also deceived the court.
So that’s one issue. The other thing the Bar might be looking at is the extortion scheme as it relates to the city’s former head of civil, Thomas Peters, who is awaiting criminal sentencing for conspiring to direct a hush payment. On Dec. 1, 2017, someone at the city attorney’s office ordered one of its outside attorneys to pay a nearly $1 million extortion demand in order to bury information that would have revealed city collusion in the Jones lawsuit over two years before it publicly surfaced. And according to a Public Records Act request for Feuer’s calendar on December 1, 2017, Feuer was scheduled for a meeting in which both federal prosecutors and Peters say the DWP extortion payment was okay’d.
Feuer, on the other hand, has been pretty resolute and short over the years with regard to LADWP. His response has been: I didn’t know about it. It was the other guy’s fault.
Feuer’s 2019 deposition taken in-connection with the billing fiasco will also likely be scrutinized by bar investigators. During the deposition Feuer testified that he didn’t know about his outside attorneys directing a lawsuit against the city until four years after it was filed, when his office said it first discovered a trove of emails indicating the scheme. When asked if he ever had a conversation with Thomas Peters about what was going on with those attorneys, Feuer said, “We have never had that conversation directly or indirectly.” Feuer said “I do not recall” more than 60 times when answering questions regarding the progress of the litigation. But the bar will be more interested in seeing if Feuer perjured himself.
The bar might also looked into Feuer’s request to reimburse fees for two of his attorneys who were interviewed by the FBI in-connection with LADWP, which I previously reported on. Two requested reimbursements on Sept. 12, 2022 asked us to pay for about $142,000 in legal fees for line attorneys Deborah Dorny, a deputy city attorney, and Richard Tom, assistant general counsel for DWP. According to the Special Master’s report, both Tom and Dorny were involved with the filing of the sham billing lawsuit and found to have committed a number of State Bar ethics violations while working on the DWP cases. However, Feuer did not mention this in his reimbursement request, instead stating, “nothing at this time indicates that the employee acted outside the scope of her employment with malice, or in bad faith.” BTW, the fee requests were put forward by Strefan Fauble, who apparently is a Succession extra pretending to be an assistant city attorney. Over the years he has regularly shown his distain for protestors:
Aside from Feuer, the bar will be looking at how these lawyers handled Antwon Jones, who is due undivided loyalty from his attorneys. So representing both sides of a lawsuit or colluding with the other side is no good. Any conflicts or conflict waiver would have to be disclosed in writing to a client. Jones’ counsel has contended that never occurred. Even then, it doesn’t look like a waiver would be allowed. People I’ve talked to over the years said a collusive settlement could ultimately trigger the bar’s Business & Professions Code 6106, which can be cause for suspension or summary disbarment, even if the attorney hasn’t been convicted of a criminal offense.
All in all, it looks like everyone involved could be investigated for violating the following ethical rules: Deceit and Collusion, Moral Turpitude, Duty of Candor, Duty of Respect, Candor with Court, Termination, Informing Client, Advising Illegality, Incompetence, and Assisting Violations.
So we’ll see if the bar, which for years has been looked down upon as only going after obscure, easy targets, will make good on its past and big dog the U.S Attorney’s Office with regard to LADWP.
That’s all I got for now. Oh and Feuer wants to be Adam Schiff now and is gonna run for his seat in 2024.
Know anything out there? Get in touch.