Countys

L.A. County is bringing on a retired judge to tackle a $4-billion question: How can officials ensure that real victims are compensated from the biggest sex abuse payout in U.S. history — and not people who made up their claims?

The county has tapped Daniel Buckley, a former presiding judge of the county’s Superior Court, to vet cases brought by Downtown LA Law Group after The Times found nine people represented by the firm who said they were paid to sue the county by recruiters. Four of the plaintiffs said they were told to fabricate the claims.

Downtown LA Law Group, or DTLA, has denied paying any of its roughly 2,700 clients, but agreed to cover the cost of Buckley to examine their cases in the $4-billion sex abuse settlement.

In a letter sent to clients Monday, Andrew Morrow, the lead attorney in the firm’s sex abuse cases, noted there are “additional safeguards” and “vetting protocols” underway following recent reports of paid clients, but did not specifically mention the new judge.

“While we categorically deny this ever occurred, we take these matters seriously and welcome the implementation of additional review procedures to ensure false claims do not move forward in the process,” wrote Morrow, the chairman of the firm’s mass torts department.

On Oct. 17, Dawyn Harrison, the top attorney for the county, requested an investigation from the State Bar based on The Times’ reporting, saying she believed some of the settlement would flow to “the pockets of the plaintiffs’ bar” rather than victims.

“The actions described in the article, if true, are despicable and run afoul of ethical duties of attorneys and criminal law in California,” Harrison wrote in a letter to Erika Doherty, the bar’s interim executive director. “I request the State Bar investigate all of the potential fraudulent and illegal activities described in this letter.”

DTLA declined to comment last week. The firm has previously said it works “hard to present only meritorious claims and have systems in place to help weed out false or exaggerated allegations.”

The bulk of the claims will be reviewed by retired Superior Court Judge Louis Meisinger, who will decide awards between $100,000 and $3 million.

The amount will depend on the severity of the abuse, the impact on the victim’s life and the amount of evidence provided, according to the allocation protocol. The money will be paid out over five years unless the victim opts to get a one-time check for $150,000.

If the judges find cases they believe are fraudulent, the county can either resolve them through a $50,000 payment or get them removed from the settlement. The county saves money in that case, but runs the risk of the plaintiff continuing to litigate and landing a larger payout from a jury trial.

It’s unusual — but not unheard of — for a neutral arbiter to be appointed to investigate cases from a specific firm in a massive settlement.

Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Barbara Houser, who is overseeing the $2.4-billion trust for victims of the Boy Scouts of Americas sex abuse cases, said last month that she had asked for an “independent third party” to vet the claims brought by Slater Slater Schulman after finding a pattern of “irregularities” and “procedural and factual problems” among its plaintiffs.

Slater Slater Schulman, headquartered in New York City, represents roughly 14,000 victims in the Boy Scouts case. It also represents roughly 3,700 people in the L.A. County settlement — the most of any firm, by far.

On Oct. 14, Lawrence Friedman, a former Department of Justice attorney who headed up the federal watchdog office for the bankruptcy system, spearheaded a blistering motion asking Houser to reduce Slater’s attorneys fees, which he estimated were at least $20 million. Friedman is seeking to push them out of the case, alleging the firm had “run amok” and “dangled the prospect of lottery sized payouts” in front of clients without vetting them.

“The SLATER law firm has little if any quality controls in place to validate the information in the 14,600 claims other than validating that they were real people who had filed the claim,” the motion stated. “…What SLATER has effectively created is simply a ‘Claims Machine’ designed to spit out huge wads of cash for itself!”

Clifford Robert, an outside attorney who is representing Slater Slater Schulman in its issues with the Boy Scouts cases, said the firm’s priority “has been and always will be securing justice on behalf of sexual abuse victims.”

Friedman, who has been outspoken about misconduct by mass tort attorneys in bankruptcy cases, said he now represents dozens of former Slater plaintiffs. The ex-clients alleged the firm waited more than a year before informing them their cases were undergoing additional vetting and their payments would be delayed. The firm told them this September about the outside investigation, which began in June 2024, according to an email attached to the Oct. 14 motion.

“We now agree that there are procedural and factual problems in some of our claim submissions to the Trust,” the three partners of Slater Slater Schulman wrote in a joint email to clients on Sept. 9. “Because of the problematic claims, we have agreed that all of our claim submissions to the Trust be vetted by an independent third party.”

Both judges who will vet the L.A. County sex abuse payouts work for Signature Resolution, a firm that specializes in resolving legal disputes outside the courtroom with a heavyweight roster of former judges and lawyers. Litigation management company BrownGreer will be the settlement administration arm, responsible for making sure the checks go out, liens are settled and the judges have the records they need from the 11,000 plaintiffs.

An additional 414 sex abuse claims that led to a separate $828-million settlement announced Oct. 17 will be reviewed by a different judge with the money distributed over the course of three years. That settlement, which involves claims from three firms that opted to litigate separately from the rest, is expected to receive final approval from the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The county will give the first tranche of money to the fund administered by BrownGreer in January, though it’s unclear when that money will trickle down to victims. The additional fraud review could slow the process as the judges will need to decide what all 11,000 of the claims are worth before any of the money goes out.

“They should have had their duck in the rows at the beginning,” said Tammy Rogers, 56, who sued over sex abuse at a county-run shelter for children in 2022.

Rogers said she has seen her bank account depleted recently following a shoulder surgery and her daughter’s funeral. She said she’s grown skeptical the settlement money will come her way anytime soon after reading the recent coverage of plaintiffs who say they were paid to sue.

“They should have known people were going to come out of the woodwork and do stuff like this,” she said. “They should have taken this time in the beginning, not in the end.”

Tammy Rogers, one of the plaintiffs who sued L.A. County over alleged abuse at MacLaren Hall, says she’s worried the extra vetting may delay payments to victims.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

The number of claims has fluctuated in recent months as some of the firms have dismissed cases from plaintiffs who died, lost interest in their lawsuit, or stopped responding. Since the Times initial investigation ran on Oct. 2, DTLA has asked for the dismissal of at least 14 plaintiffs, according to a Times analysis of court records.

On Oct. 17, the firm asked a judge to dismiss three people in a 63-plaintiff lawsuit filed April 29 who told The Times they’d been paid to sue the county for sex abuse.

Quantavia Smith, whose case DTLA asked to be dismissed without prejudice, previously told The Times a recruiter paid her to join the litigation, but said she had a legitimate sex abuse claim against the county. She said the recruiter drove her to the office of a downtown law firm and then gave her $200.

The firm also asked to dismiss the cases of Nevada Barker and Austin Beagle with prejudice, meaning the cases can’t be refilled. The Times reported this month that the Texan couple were told to make up allegations of abuse at a county-run juvenile hall and provided a script by someone inside the firm’s downtown office. Both said they left the firm with $100.

The Times could not reach the alleged recruiter for comment.

Austin Beagle and Nevada Barker say they were unwittingly ushered into a fraudulent lawsuit against L.A. County filed by Downtown LA Law Group.

(Joe Garcia/For The Times)

On the morning the story published Oct. 16, Beagle and Barker each received an automated email from Vinesign, a legal e-signature site, telling them Downtown LA Law was requesting their signature on a document.

“I wish to affirm my claim that I was sexually abused in a Los Angeles County juvenile facility, and I was never paid to bring this claim forward,” stated the DTLA declaration, which they were asked to sign under the penalty of perjury.

Both said they did not want to sign as it was not true — and the opposite of what had just been published that morning in The Times. Beagle said the firm called twice that morning to discuss.

“We told them just dismiss it,” said Beagle. “We ain’t talking about it.”

Times assistant data and graphics editor Sean Greene contributed to this report.

It was billed as a bargain-basement deal: L.A. County would buy the Gas Company Tower for $200 million — a third of what the downtown skyscraper cost before the pandemic sent office prices plummeting.

Nine months after the sale closed, some of the supervisors say they have sticker shock.

The sore point: a looming $230-million contract for “voluntary seismic upgrades” to the newly purchased tower, soon to become the county’s new headquarters.

“I never heard that it would double the cost of the purchase,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn, who cast a ‘hell no’ vote against buying the building. “I’m holding out hope that smarter minds will prevail, and we can stop any more investment in this building.”

On Tuesday, Supervisors Hilda Solis and Lindsey Horvath will introduce a motion to “immediately suspend” all seismic work.

“Given that we are in the budget constraints that we are in, I was surprised to know that that work was still being contemplated,” said Horvath.

The county’s financial future has never looked so grim. Federal cuts will force the county to slash health services and potentially shutter a hospital, Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport warned the board this week. The county soon will start making payments for its historically large $4-billion sex abuse settlement. Newly negotiated raises for county employees could cost the county $2 billion.

Before the purchase, the supervisors were given ballpark figures as to just how much it would cost to bring the Gas Company Tower into tiptop shape vs. rehabbing the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, the county’s current headquarters, which is widely viewed by county employees as a death trap during the next major earthquake.

To earthquake-proof the hall — by far the riskiest of the two buildings — it could cost $700 million, according to estimates provided to the board last fall. To do the same for the newer Gas Company Tower, the county Chief Executive Office estimated it could potentially cost about $400 million. (As of now, the county is planning to spend less than that with a bid amount of $234.5 million.)

The Gas Company Tower came out looking the better deal by about a billion dollars, according to the Chief Executive Office, once it took into account other costs needed to upgrade the Hall of Administration — including more than a billion dollars in deferred maintenance and improvements.

Hahn’s not swayed.

“I think the bureaucrats had a plan and they made their numbers fit to sell this ill-conceived project,” she continued, adding she believed similar doubt was starting to creep in among her colleagues.

“I’ve heard some of them have some buyer’s remorse,” she said.

Horvath says she doesn’t regret buying the building — but she is skeptical that the county needs to pour millions more into the tower.

“I still maintain that the purchase of the building was the right thing to do,” she said. “If retrofitting is not needed, then I want to understand why we would [retrofit] at a time such as this, when we are making a very clear case about the difficult financial position we’re in.”

The tower is one of many L.A. skyscrapers that incorporates a “steel moment frame” as part of its structure. In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, buildings with the frame did not collapse, but some were badly damaged.

Lennie LaGuire, a spokesperson for the Chief Executive Office, previously told The Times that the tower is already safe and the upgrades are “proactive.”

“The County is choosing to perform this work proactively with an eye to the future, to ensure that the building performs optimally in the decades ahead,” LaGuire said.

During brutal labor negotiations over the last year, the purchase of the skyscraper became a touchy subject. Labor condemned it as an unnecessary splurge. The county insisted it was an obvious money saver.

The hard feelings haven’t gone away, with some unions saying they were kept in the dark about the tower’s true cost.

“The priority should be those facilities the public relies upon for emergencies and daily needs, like sheriff’s stations, fire stations, medical facilities, etc.” said Richard Pippin, president of the sheriff‘s deputies union. “Look, we get it — with the near doubling of the Board of Supervisors and an elected County Executive Officer, everyone wants an office with a better view, but is that what’s best for the public we serve?”

The motion Tuesday also requests a report on where the money to finance the retrofit is coming from and which departments will be moving into the tower.

“The purpose of this acquisition was to realize substantial savings for the County of Los Angeles by consolidating operations and avoiding leased spaces,” the motion states. “However, there has been little to no transparency into what progress, if any, the County has made in occupying spaces in the Gas Company Tower after eight months of ownership.”

According to the Chief Executive Office, some employees have started to move into the building, but the entire move is expected to take three years.

State of play

— OLYMPIC JITTERS: Councilmember Imelda Padilla, a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on the 2028 Olympics and Paralympic Games, called President Trump’s announcement that he would head a federal Olympic task force a “real curveball” for the city and raised concerns about what a mercurial president would mean for the Olympics. “We are a little nervous to see what they’re going to ask for,” Padilla said during the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon on Thursday referring to the Trump administration’s involvement in the Olympics. She also called Trump’s assertion that Bass was not very competent “completely false.”

—TUNNEL TROUBLE: The city spent $25,800, using 10 contracted workers, to paint over graffiti in the 2nd Street Tunnel — only for taggers to immediately paint the walls again within 24 hours. “It’s infuriating that these selfish vandals are wasting tax dollars aimed at improving the city for all Angelenos,” said Steve King, president of the Board of Public Works.

— SILVER LININGS: L.A. County supervisors say they’re open to the idea of a receiver taking control of the beleaguered juvenile halls. But for it to happen, a majority on the board says the receiver will need to take on union agreements and civil service rules, which they say keep problem employees on the payroll.

—PLEA TO THE FEDS: A prominent law firm suing L.A. County over childhood sexual abuse is asking for a federal investigation into how so many children were harmed while in county custody. In a letter addressed to U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, attorney John Manly wrote that he wanted to see the U.S. attorney’s office conduct an “immediate investigation” into any federal crimes committed by staff within the county’s Probation Department.

—COOLING OFF: L.A. County will soon require landlords in unincorporated areas to provide a way for tenants to keep their rental units 82 degrees or below. The supervisors say the law is necessary to combat heat-related deaths fueled by climate change.

—A HIGH-PRICED HALF-MONTH: A law firm representing the city of Los Angeles in a high-profile homelessness case submitted a $1.8-million invoice for two weeks of work in May. The costs comes as the city faces significant financial burdens from rising legal payouts.

— VENUE VOTE: The hotel workers union turned in a ballot proposal to require that voters approve of “event centers” for the 2028 Olympics, including sports facilities and concert halls. Former City Councilmember Paul Krekorian, who heads Mayor Karen Bass’ Office of Special Events, said the measure “would make vital projects essential for our city and these Games potentially impossible to complete.”

—TEMPORARY LEAVE: As of next week, Deputy Mayor Randall Winston — who also serves as a judge advocate in the U.S. Army National Guard Reserve — will be on a leave of absence from the Mayor’s office for military training. Winston was originally supposed to go on leave in January but deferred to help support wildfire response and recovery efforts. Andrea Greene, Executive Officer of the Office of Infrastructure, will be filling his role until he returns in mid-December, according to the Mayor’s office.

QUICK HITS

• On the docket for next week: The county supervisors are asking the sheriff’s department to report on their use-of-force policies as they relate to journalists covering the ongoing ICE raids.

Stay in touch

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Last November, voters approved a sprawling overhaul to L.A. County’s government.

They didn’t realize they were also repealing the county’s landmark criminal justice reform.

Eight months later, county officials are just now realizing they unwittingly committed an administrative screw-up for the ages.

Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn co-authored Measure G, which changed the county charter to expand the five-person board and elect a new county executive, among other momentous shifts.

But nobody seemed to realize the new charter language would repeal Measure J, which voters approved in 2020 to dedicate hundreds of millions towards services that offer alternatives to incarceration.

“We can confirm that due to an inadvertent administrative error by a prior Executive Officer administration, Measure J was not placed in the County’s Charter after its passage in 2020,” said County Counsel in a statement. “As a result, when the voters passed Measure G, they repealed Measure J effective December 2028.”

The mistake appears to stem from a failure by the county’s executive office to update the county charter with Measure J after it passed in 2020. County lawyers then failed to include the Measure J language when they drafted the 2024 ballot measure.

So when voters approved Measure G, they accidentally repealed Measure J, according to the county.

The screw-up was first discovered by John Fasana, a former Duarte Councilmember who sits on the county’s governance reform task force, which is tasked with implementing the government overhaul. He said he first raised the issue with the county in early June.

“Someone goofed,” said Fasana, who was appointed to the taskforce by Supervisor Kathryn Barger. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.”

Megan Castillo, a coordinator with the Reimagine LA Coalition, which pushed Measure J to the ballot in 2020, said she was disturbed to learn last week that the fruit of years of advocacy would soon be wiped away accidentally.

“It shouldn’t be undermined just because folks rushed policy making,” said Castillo. “We know more voters were for Measure J than Measure G. It’s disrespectful to the will of the people to find this could unintentionally happen.”

Measure J requires that 10% of locally generated, unrestricted L.A. County money — estimated between $360 million and $900 million — be spent on social services, such as housing, mental health treatment and other jail diversion programs. The county is prohibited from spending the money on the carceral system — prisons, jails or law enforcement agencies.

Castillo said she was worried the repeal would result in a “deep economic fallout” for these programs with county money potentially diverted to costs required by Measure G, like the salaries of new politicians and their staff. Measure G bars the county from raising taxes meaning this money will have to come from elsewhere in the county budget.

Castillo said she first brought the issue to the attention to deputies for Hahn and Horvath last week.

“They are shocked as well,” said Castillo.

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who led the charge on Measure G, said in a statement a proposal was coming to correct the “County bureaucracy’s error related to Measure J.”

“This measure was the result of a hard-fought, community-led effort that I wholeheartedly supported—and remain deeply committed to upholding,” said Horvath. “This situation makes clear why Measure G is so urgently needed. … When five people are in charge, no one is in charge, and this is a quintessential example of what that means.”

Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who opposed the overhaul of the county charter, saw it a little differently.

“It also reinforces one of the key concerns I had about Measure G from the start. When major changes to the County Charter are pushed forward without sufficient time for analysis, public input, and transparency, mistakes become more likely. Oversights like this are exactly what can happen,” Barger said in a statement. “This error could–and should–have been caught before voters were asked to make a decision.”

Supervisor Hilda Solis said she was “surprised and concerned” to learn about the error but was confident the funding envisioned by Measure J would “continue unaffected.”

The Times reached out to the other two supervisors and has yet to receive their responses.

County attorneys said in a statement they were working with the executive office to “address this situation” and ensure the executive office “timely codified” charter amendments going forward. They emphasized that, despite the looming repeal of Measure J, the county will continue to align its budget with the goals of the measure.

Derek Hsieh, head of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs and a member of the governance reform taskforce member, called the mistake a “cluster—.”

“I think the voters and county employees would like to know when the Board of Supervisors knew about this mistake and what they plan on doing to fix it,” said Hsieh, who was an outspoken opponent of both Measure G and Measure J.

The union, which represents sheriff‘s deputies, had spent more than $3.5 million on advertising on TV and social media to fight Measure J. The union had also joined other county labor unions to challenge the measure in court.

“There’s absolutely no question both by the will of the voters and a decision by the California Supreme Court that Measure J is the law of the land,” said Hsieh.

The screw-up became public Wednesday night at the task force’s second-ever meeting. Fasana told his fellow members who had gatherered at Bob Hope Patriotic Hall downtown he had found “a major issue.”

The news created something of an uproar in meeting that was supposed to focus on more mundane bureaucratic matters. Some members said they wanted to wait to discuss it until everyone had been briefed on what exactly he was talking about.

Others said they didn’t understand how they could talk about anything else.

“To me all the work we’re trying to move forward with stops because there’s a problem —a significant, fundamental one,” said Derek Steele, who was appointed by Supervisor Holly Mitchell.

“We may actually need to take Measure G back to the people,” said Steele. “ We need to make sure we have a solve for this.”

Both Mitchell and Barger opposed Measure G, arguing it had been put together too hastily and gave too much power to an ill-defined county executive.

Sara Sadhwani, who was appointed to the task force by Horvath, said she found the accidental repeal of Measure J “incredibly concerning,” but found the way the news had been delivered to the task force “obstructive.”

“It raises so many questions for me and raises concerns about who is operating in good faith on this task forcem,” said Sadhwani. “If this was a good faith effort, wouldn’t we have agendized this issue, instead of dropping a bomb that people have no knowledge of.”

The taskforce has asked for a report from the county’s attorneys for their next meeting.

Jaclyn Cosgrove contributed to this story.

Bell Wharf Beach in Leigh-on-Sea is just a 10-minute walk from the train station and offers a much more tranquil experience compared to Southend’s bustling beaches

Hidden away on the Thames Estuary, nestled amongst cobbled streets and historic cockle sheds, Bell Wharf Beach is touted as ‘Essex’s best-kept secret’. This charming Leigh-on-Sea beach offers a more tranquil experience compared to the bustling sands of nearby Southend, making it a perfect spot for a leisurely summer walk.

Just a ten-minute stroll from Leigh’s train station, Old Leigh welcomes visitors with a sandy haven surrounded by delightful cafes, traditional pubs, and enticing shops. It’s a place where you can watch fishing boats bring in their catch, which is later served up fresh in the local restaurants.

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One establishment worth noting is Osborne Bros, tucked away in an old stable mews near the original cockle sheds. This family-run business has been serving freshly prepared seafood since the 1880s.

Directly across from Osborne Bros is the Crooked Billet, a cosy pub with history dating back to the late 16th century. Other attractions near the beach include The Mayflower, The Peterboat, and Sara’s Tea Garden, reports Essex Live.

Bell Wharf Beach is also just a short hop from the Two Tree Island Nature Reserve, a sanctuary where summer visitors might spot butterflies, voles, and kestrels flying overhead.

For those travelling by car, Victoria Wharf Car Park offers convenient paid parking right next to the beach. Leigh-on-Sea has scooped up more praise, this time from Muddy Stilettos, bagging the title of Essex’s best place to live.

They paint a picture of a town brimming with “Industrial-style coffee houses, boutique bars and a sandy shoreline lined by characterful cockle sheds.

“Leigh-on-Sea is Southend’s smaller, trendier sister and thanks to a steady stream of relocating Londoners over the years, it’s managed to blend its small-town-seaside charm with on-trend hospitality offerings.

“Yes, there’s even an artisan vegan-friendly gelato house and it doesn’t come much more ‘Shoreditch of Essex’ than that.”