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Tag: mike feuer

  • Los Angeles settles with Monsanto for $35 million over PCBs in waterways

    Los Angeles settles with Monsanto for $35 million over PCBs in waterways

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    Contamination of key Los Angeles waterways such as the Santa Monica Bay, Los Angeles Harbor and Echo Park Lake due to the spread of toxic chemicals is at the heart of a $35-million settlement between the L.A. City Council and agriculture giant Monsanto and two smaller companies.

    The City Council on Tuesday announced the payout by the companies to settle a lawsuit filed in 2022 over damage from long-banned chemicals called PCBs, which have been linked to health problems including cancer.

    The City Council approved the settlement at Tuesday afternoon’s meeting, voting 13 to 0 after a closed session. Councilmembers Imelda Padilla and Nithya Raman were absent.

    A call to the office of City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto was not immediately answered, nor was a call to Monsanto’s representation.

    In March 2022, then-City Atty. Mike Feuer sued Monsanto, which was swallowed by the German corporation Bayer in 2018, and smaller chemical companies Solutia Inc. and Pharmacia.

    The complaint sought compensation for the cost of past cleanups — and for future abatement of — polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. The chemicals tainted and continue to pollute many Los Angeles waterways, including the Dominguez Channel, Ballona Creek, Marina del Rey and Machado Lake.

    “The city has expended millions and millions of dollars so far and is going to continue to expend millions and millions of dollars to remediate this issue,” Feuer said at the time.

    PCBs are human-made organic chemicals that have no known taste or smell and range in consistency from oils to waxes, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

    They had several commercial uses, including in transformers and capacitors, oil used in motors and hydraulic systems, cable insulation, oil-based paint, caulking and plastics.

    PCBs were produced and used domestically from roughly 1929 until they were banned in 1979, according to the EPA.

    From the 1930s through 1977, Monsanto was the sole producer of PCBs in the United States, according to the National Library of Medicine.

    Exposure to PCBs increases the chances of a person developing cancer while diminishing the effectiveness of the immune system and damaging reproductive organs and the nervous system, according to the EPA.

    The lawsuit alleged that Monsanto knew that “its commercial PCB formulations were highly toxic and would inevitably produce precisely the contamination and human health risks that have occurred.” Instead of informing public officials, the company “misled the public, regulators, and its own customers about these key facts.”

    The lawsuit alleged that, as early as 1937, Monsanto acknowledged internally that PCBs produced “systemic toxic effects upon prolonged exposure.”

    Many of Los Angeles’ waterways had been impaired by PCB contamination, according to the lawsuit.

    The city has said that it continues to shoulder the cost and responsibility of cleaning these locales along with monitoring and analyzing samples.

    People face PCB exposure, according to the lawsuit, by eating contaminated food, breathing contaminated air, or drinking or swimming in contaminated water. Fish captured in contaminated waters and eaten also provide an avenue for PCB exposure.

    The settlement avoids a court trial, which presented some risk to the city.

    Seattle claimed a $160-million settlement with Monsanto in July over PCBs in the city’s drainage system and rivers.

    In May, however, an appeals court in Washington state overturned a $185-million verdict against Monsanto in a lawsuit brought by three teachers who claimed brain damage due to PCB leaks.

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    Andrew J. Campa

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  • Documents will be unsealed in L.A. city attorney and DWP corruption case, judge rules

    Documents will be unsealed in L.A. city attorney and DWP corruption case, judge rules

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    More than 1,000 pages of confidential documents from a federal criminal investigation into the Los Angeles city attorney’s office and the Department of Water and Power will be unsealed, a federal judge signaled Friday.

    The Times and Consumer Watchdog had requested the documents to better understand the government’s criminal case and whether former City Atty. Mike Feuer bore any culpability for a scandal involving a sham lawsuit and an extortion plot. Feuer has long denied wrongdoing.

    In a tentative ruling, U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. said the documents, which consist mainly of dozens of search warrants filed during the government’s investigation, will be unsealed, with personal data redacted.

    The names of public officials, along with individuals who are “wrongdoers,” will not be redacted, Blumenfeld said at a hearing Friday — a blow to prosecutors who had sought to keep the officials’ names from the public.

    The Times and Consumer Watchdog are expected to work with the U.S. attorney’s office to ready the documents for release in the coming weeks.

    Much of Friday’s hearing centered on Feuer and whether an FBI agent’s alleged assertions that Feuer lied to a grand jury and lied to the FBI should be redacted.

    The FBI agent’s purported comments, made in an affidavit for a search warrant, were revealed in court by a defendant, Paul Paradis, at his sentencing in November.

    Paradis, a former attorney turned cooperating witness for the federal government, pleaded guilty to accepting a nearly $2.2 million kickback from another attorney working on the DWP case and was sentenced to 33 months in prison.

    Paradis had ingratiated himself at City Hall, befriending top city officials. An outside lawyer from New York, he was retained by Feuer’s office to help with litigation related to the DWP, then went on to secure separate contracts at the DWP.

    Later, he secretly recorded high-ranking city officials and was present when armed agents raided the home of DWP general manager David Wright, who is serving a six-year sentence after conspiring to give Paradis a lucrative contract.

    Jerry Flanagan, an attorney for Consumer Watchdog and The Times, told Blumenfeld that the FBI agent’s comments amounted to an “opinion” that wasn’t subject to federal rules that require grand jury information to be kept confidential. Flanagan also argued that the “cat is out of the bag” because Paradis had publicly revealed the alleged comments.

    Blumenfeld appeared concerned about protecting the secrecy of the grand jury process and said he would rule later on the issue.

    Feuer has said he had no knowledge of any crimes. In a 2022 letter, the U.S. attorney’s office told Feuer that he wasn’t a target in their criminal investigation.

    When asked by The Times last November about the FBI agent‘s alleged statements, Feuer pointed to the 2022 letter.

    Feuer also told The Times last year that he gave the U.S. attorney’s office his phone in 2020, but investigators did not search his home or office.

    A former state assemblymember and L.A. City Council member, Feuer ran for L.A. mayor in 2022 but dropped out shortly before the primary. Last month, he finished fourth in the primary for the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Adam B. Schiff.

    The 1,400 pages of search warrants and other documents requested by The Times and Consumer Watchdog were issued between 2019 and 2021.

    Court filings by prosecutors in the criminal case make clear that some individuals, including city officials who remain anonymous in the filings, took part in or were aware of various schemes.

    Only four people were ultimately charged, and prosecutors said that their case concluded last year.

    The criminal prosecution centered on a 2015 class-action lawsuit brought by DWP customers over massive errors caused by a new billing system at the utility.

    The lawsuit was covertly written by Paradis, then working for Feuer’s office, who handed the suit to an outside attorney to file against the city.

    The goal, according to prosecutors, was to settle all the claims by various DWP customers on terms advantageous to the city.

    Prosecutors also uncovered other unethical and illegal schemes, including an illicit payment involving the city attorney’s office.

    Blumenfeld said at Friday’s hearing that he expected the name of one person, Julissa Salgueiro, to remain unredacted in the search warrants and other documents.

    “Ms. Salgueiro is a quintessential wrongdoer,” Blumenfeld said, describing why her name should be unredacted.

    Prosecutors have never named or charged Salgueiro, but their court filings refer to a former employee of a Beverly Hills law firm who threatened to reveal the city’s collusive lawsuit over the DWP billing errors.

    The employee had “stolen or improperly retained” documents showing the collusive lawsuit and demanded money for their return, prosecutors said in court documents.

    Thomas Peters, a top aide to Feuer, was charged with aiding and abetting extortion after being ordered by unnamed city staff to take care of the employee’s threats, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors never charged any other senior staff members from the city attorney’s office.

    After pleading guilty, Peters was sentenced to nine months home detention and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.

    Salgueiro’s attorney, William Pitman, told The Times on Friday that he “respectfully disagrees with Judge Blumenfeld’s opinion.” His client has never been charged, indicted and has no criminal history, he said.

    “With regard to the unsealing motion, Ms. Salguiero was never notified [of the case],” said Pitman.

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    Dakota Smith

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  • Key lawyer in DWP scandal gets 33-month prison sentence

    Key lawyer in DWP scandal gets 33-month prison sentence

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    A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a key figure in the sprawling corruption scandal at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the city attorney’s office to nearly three years in prison.

    U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. ordered Paul Paradis, a former attorney turned cooperating witness for the federal government, to serve 33 months — more than the 18-month sentence recommended by prosecutors.

    Paradis’ attorneys sought to have their client avoid prison and pointed to the numerous undercover operations undertaken by Paradis for the government that helped lead to guilty pleas in the corruption case.

    The judge’s sentence appears to mark the final chapter in the federal criminal investigation that has engulfed City Hall since FBI agents first raided multiple government offices in the summer of 2019.

    Paradis was one player in the scandal, which focused on a sham lawsuit over inflated DWP bills that was crafted by the city, part of an audacious plan for the city to sue itself in order to quickly settle the slew of claims filed by DWP customers.

    Paradis admitted to taking a nearly $2.2-million kickback from another attorney working on the DWP case. He also took part in other bribery schemes, according to prosecutors.

    Blumenfeld, in delivering his sentence, cited Paradis’ long legal career. He said that Paradis, an aggressive plaintiff’s attorney from New York, had a “keen” intellect and was “blessed with charm and charisma.”

    But ultimately, Paradis went down a path of corruption. “Mr. Paradis was at the center” of a “greedy and corrupt” scheme,” Blumenfeld said.

    Paradis, in his remarks to the judge, expressed remorse over his actions. Standing at the lectern, he also publicly accused former City Atty. Mike Feuer of lying to the grand jury and to investigators, based on statements Paradis said were made by an FBI agent in an affidavit for a search warrant.

    Separately, Paradis has filed various documents, including State Bar and ethics complaints, accusing other attorneys, including Feuer, of lying or other wrongdoing.

    Feuer has long denied wrongdoing in the case.

    Talking to reporters after the sentencing, Paradis said he was “devastated” by the sentence.

    Despite admissions in court documents by prosecutors that the city’s legal scheme was known by other top personnel in the city attorney’s office, the U.S. attorney’s office ultimately charged only two attorneys with crimes.

    Prosecutors have declined to explain their charging decisions, but a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office said earlier this year that, generally speaking, the office doesn’t pursue charges when “every element of a federal offense” isn’t established.

    The DWP estimates that the scandal has cost the city more than $120 million.

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    Dakota Smith

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