BOSTON — A federal judge said Friday that she expects to temporarily block efforts by the Trump administration to end a program that offered temporary legal protections for more than 10,000 family members of citizens and green card holders.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said at a hearing that she planned to issue a temporary restraining order but did not say when it would be issued. This case is part of a broader effort by the administration to end temporary legal protection for numerous groups and comes just over a week since another judge ruled that hundreds of people from South Sudan may live and work in the United States legally.
“The government, having invited people to apply, is now laying traps between those people and getting the green card,” said Justin Cox, an attorney who works with Justice Action Center and argued the case for the plaintiffs. “That is incredibly inequitable.”
This case involved a program called Family Reunification Parole, or FRP, and affects people from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras. Most of them are set to lose their legal protections, which were put in place during the Biden administration, by Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security terminated protections late last year.
The case involves five plaintiffs, but lawyers are seeking to have any ruling cover everyone that is part of the program.
“Although in a temporary status, these parolees did not come temporarily; they came to get a jump-start on their new lives in the United States, typically bringing immediate family members with them,” plaintiffs wrote in their motion. “Since they arrived, FRP parolees have gotten employment authorization documents, jobs, and enrolled their kids in school.”
The government, in its brief and in court, argued that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has the authority to terminate any parole program and gave adequate notice by publishing the termination in the federal registry. It also argued that the program’s termination was necessary on national security grounds because the people had not been property vetted. It also said resources to maintain this program would be better used in other immigration programs.
“Parole can be terminated at any time,” Katie Rose Talley, a lawyer for the government told the court. “That is what is being done. There is nothing unlawful about that.”
Talwani conceded that the government can end the program but she took issue with the way it was done.
The government argued that just announcing in the federal registry it was ending the program was sufficient. But Talwani demanded the government show how it has alerted people through a written notice — a letter or email — that the program was ending.
“I understand why plaintiffs feel like they came here and made all these plans and were going to be here for a very long time,” Talwani said. “I have a group of people who are trying to follow the law. I am saying to you that, we as Americans, the United States needs to.”
Lower courts have largely supported keeping temporary protections for many groups. But in May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants for now, pushing the total number of people who could be newly exposed to deportation to nearly 1 million.
The justices lifted a lower-court order that kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The decision came after the court allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case.
The court did not explain its reasoning in the brief order, as is typical on its emergency docket. Two justices publicly dissented.
You’re HBO, and your newest release is an explosive documentary about one of the most controversial sectors of the United States government: the Border Patrol. What do you do to get it as much attention as possible?
We’re seeing their strategy play out right now.
“Critical Incident: Death at the Border” recounts the death of Anastasio Hernández Rojas, a 42-year-old undocumented immigrant who died in 2010 days after immigration agents handcuffed, beat and Tasered him near the San Ysidro Port of Entry after trying to deport him to Mexico. Border Patrol at the time said they used force after Hernández Rojas, who had lived in this country since he was 15, resisted them.
The case drew international attention and Hernández Rojas’ family received a $1-million settlement from the federal government, which declined to file criminal charges against those involved in his death even though the San Diego County coroner’s office ruled it a homicide. Enter John Carlos Frey, a reporter who has pursued the story for nearly 15 years and who is one of the protagonists in “Critical Incident.”
He knocks on the doors of agents who were there when Hernández Rojas died, discovers footage that contradicts the Border Patrol’s official account and uncovers a secretive Border Patrol unit tasked with the “mitigation” of use-of-force incidents that was disbanded in 2022. The documentary includes an interview with a whistleblower who claimed bosses told him to doctor evidence to exculpate the agency in the death of Hernández Rojas. It also alleges the cover-up went all the way up to Customs and Border Protection commissioner Rodney Scott, who was Border Patrol deputy chief for the San Diego region when Hernández Rojas died.
Scott appears near the end of “Critical Incident” to dismiss those “allegations” and declines to comment about any culpability those involved may have had, citing ongoing litigation. “This case from over a decade ago was thoroughly investigated and resolved by the Department of Justice and local law enforcement,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Times in a statement when I asked for comment about the documentary’s findings. “Efforts to malign CBP and ICE officers as lawbreakers are slanderous, irresponsible, and only reveal the media’s eagerness to mislead the American people.”
“Critical Incident” is taut, disturbing, timely and a brisk hour and a half. It deserves as many viewers as possible and a publicity campaign as ubiquitous as what HBO is currently pushing for its hit hockey romance, “Heated Rivalry.”
Instead, the network released “Critical Incident” on Dec. 29, when most Americans were lost in a haze of Christmas leftovers, “Avengers: Endgame” reruns and college football bowl games. It’s not listed alongside other recently released documentaries on HBO’s website, and I wasn’t able to find it on the network’s streaming app’s “Just Added” tab.
Director Rick Rowley was diplomatic about his documentary’s “difficult” release date, saying he has “limited insight” into HBO’s decision. He’s nevertheless confident “this film is going to have a long life because these [Border Patrol] issues are only more pressing as the days pass.”
Frey wasn’t as polite: “If I was an executive and released it on that date, I would be fired.”
Rodney Scott, then-nominee for commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, arrives for a Senate confirmation hearing in April 2025.
(Stefani Reynolds / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
An HBO spokesperson pushed back on Frey’s criticism, stating, “The documentary was actually released during one of the highest usage times on the platform and we are proud to say the film is doing very well, even showing up in the top 10 rail.”
In development for four years, Frey said “Critical Incident” was supposed to air just before the 2024 election. He showed me a text message from a senior producer attesting to that. But HBO held on to it even as a Senate committee grilled Scott about Hernández Rojas’ death during his confirmation hearing last April, which isn’t included in the documentary. The documentary didn’t air even as the Border Patrol’s invasion of cities far from the U.S.-Mexico border throughout last year made the story “Critical Incident” told more relevant than ever.
HBO “buried it on purpose,” Frey, 56, told me over breakfast in Boyle Heights. He blames the current political environment — specifically, Netflix’s proposed $82.7-billion bid to acquire HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros., which federal regulators would have to approve. The last thing executives wants to do right now, Frey argued, is anger President Trump by promoting a documentary that attacks his deportation deluge.
“They buried it on the worst day of the year when no one is watching, and of course, they’re going to deny it,” Frey said.
“That is, of course, not true,” the HBO spokesperson said .
Covering la migra is personal for Frey, who grew up in Tijuana and Imperial Beach with views of the U.S.-Mexico border fence. When he was 12, a Border Patrol agent approached his mother — then a green card holder — while her son was playing outside.
“He wouldn’t believe anything she would say and wouldn’t let her go to our house to get her documents,” Frey said. He’s of average height, deep-voiced and barrel-chested and tends to respond to questions with questions. “Why would he? The agent deported her.”
As an adult, Frey began to cover the Border Patrol in a post-9/11 era. Much like today, it was rapidly expanding, and aggressive tactics like breaking car windows when the occupants weren’t resisting and agent-involved shootings were endemic. The Hernández Rojas case entered his scope after someone reached out claiming they had footage of his death.
“The original narrative was Anastasio became belligerent, they subdued him and he died,” Frey said. “The case was closed, the Border Patrol had written it off.”
The source was initially too scared to share their recording, but Frey eventually convinced them after forwarding his stories about repeated Border Patrol abuses of power. What he saw — about a dozen Border Patrol agents circling a prone, moaning Hernández Rojas, Tasering and punching him while onlookers scream at them to stop — left the reporter “disgusted.”
The footage eventually aired on a 2012 PBS program, which made the story go national. Frey’s continued work on the case eventually caught the attention of Rowley, whose documentaries on neo-Nazi groups, the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the War on Terror have earned him Emmy wins and an Oscar nomination.
The documentarian wanted to examine the Border Patrol’s impunity, and, he said, “Anastasio’s story is one of the only stories that takes you all the way to the top. And you have to work with John if you’re going to do the Anastasio case. He’s fearless.”
Rowley is proud of his final product but admitted that he’s “used to having more press around a film release, especially about a film about … the most important domestic issue in the country, especially in the last year.”
That’s what angers Frey the most about the release of “Critical Incident.”
“The stories I used to hear — ‘Border Patrol broke my windows, left me bloodied, grabbed me without asking any questions’ — it’s now in neighborhoods,” he said. He twisted a napkin, tossed it into the pile of twisted napkins next to his coffee cup.
“It’s a deliberate choice when you’re going to release a documentary and how. If I were HBO and I had evidence of a murder by the feds, I would’ve led with that inmy promotion. I would think that’s a selling point, especially with the [immigration] raids. Instead, they have me hugging someone in the trailer.”
Frey shook his head. “We made a good film, but half the battle is getting people to see it.”
Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre said Wednesday that anyone who says he has thrown in the towel on his battle with Parkinson’s disease is spreading fake news.
“Thank you everyone for your prayers and concerns, but contrary to reports, I have not given up hope in my battle with Parkinson’s!” the 56-year-old Super Bowl champion wrote on X. “Not sure where this came from — but just like I never gave up on the gridiron — not going to start now. I pray there will be a cure one day and I appreciate you all.”
Favre also told TMZ on Wednesday: “I have absolutely not given up and I am fighting till the end. Yes I have progressed a little faster than I would have hoped at this point but I’m extremely thankful and blessed!!!”
On the podcast, Favre sounds like he’s trying to be realistic about his condition while also remaining hopeful.
“As you well know, there’s no cure,” Favre said. “I hear from time to time, ‘Well, they’re five years away from a cure.’ You know, I hope that that’s the case. I really do. But I’m not holding my breath.”
He mentioned Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali as people who “have really set the bar high on Parkinson’s and treatments and things of that nature.”
“And I’m sure that when they were diagnosed, they thought, ‘Well, they’ll have a cure in five years. I’ll be fine,’” Favre said. “Well, that’s not the case. So, I’m optimistic, but again, I’m not holding my breath.”
Favre’s comments on Wednesday may have been in response to a recent online article that seemed to interpret his podcast remarks in a different way than he intended.
Also on the podcast, Favre said he’s in the early stages of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease, which is the most common type of the disorder. He said his major symptoms are “rigidity and stiffness,” which is worst in the morning before he takes his medication and has particularly affected his right side.
Favre added that he occasionally experiences shaking but has not had any memory loss issues.
“All in all, I’m pretty good,” he said. “I would say I’ve progressed maybe a little. … If you dropped a dime on the floor in front of me and I reached down with my right hand, I may for five minutes try to pick up that dime and eventually just grab it with my left hand. Initially when I would take the medicine, my dexterity in my right hand was pretty smooth. But that’s not the case anymore.
“So that’s one of the reasons I think I may have progressed a little bit. Hopefully not. Maybe it’s I’m looking into something more than it really is, but all in all, again I’m very blessed and thankful.”
SACRAMENTO — A California lawmaker introduced a bill Monday to crack down on fake liens filed against politicians, court employees and businesses that can force victims to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees to clear their names and repair their credit.
The bill by Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) comes after a Times investigation in July found lien claims filed with the secretary of state’s office are used by antigovernment agitators, including so-called “sovereign citizens,” for conspiracy-laced demands and vendettas. The U.S. Justice Department and the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service have called fake liens a form of “paper terrorism.”
“This isn’t an exotic or onerous fix,” Papan said Monday after the state Legislature returned to the Capitol to begin a new session. “The fact is that someone can do irreparable damage to someone’s reputation and their ability to have good credit. And we can certainly do better in California.”
Liens are recorded in state Uniform Commercial Code databases across the country, with the public filings intended to standardize interstate transactions and alert creditors about business debts and financial obligations.
The Times’ investigation found that state databases of UCC liens, which were designed to be straightforward and quick to file, are inherently vulnerable to abuse. A single false filing can claim an individual or business owes debts worth hundreds of millions or even trillions of dollars. Others flood victims with repeated filings that make it appear they are entangled in complex financial disputes.
In California, a lien recorded with the secretary of state costs $5 to file, but removing a fraudulent one from the public database requires a court order, which can cost thousands in attorney and court fees. The state does not notify a person when a lien names them as the debtor, allowing fake filings to remain in California’s public database for years before a victim discovers them. Many politicians and government employees learned from The Times that they had been targeted with spurious filings.
Under Assembly Bill 501, the secretary of state’s office would be required to notify individuals within 21 days if they are named as a debtor in a lien filing. The legislation also would delay court fees until the end of judicial proceedings.
In cases where the lien is found to be fraudulent, the bill would make the guilty party liable to the victim for three times the amount of court fees paid. The bill would also increase the maximum civil penalty for filing a fraudulent lien to $15,000, up from $5,000. California law already makes it a felony to knowingly file a fake lien.
“Victims of these fraudulent filings often have no idea they’ve been targeted until real harm is done,” Papan said. “That harm can look like wrecked credit, failed background checks, or failed mortgage applications while the people committing the fraud face relatively little risk or consequence.”
The National Assn. of Secretaries of State said the vast majority of UCC filings are legitimate. But, in a 2023 report, the association said that “fraudulent or bogus filings” were a widespread and persistent problem across the country, warning that they “can create serious financial difficulties for victims.”
One high-profile California public official who was unaware he had been named in a UCC claim until contacted by The Times said he was alarmed to find that the filing contained his home address. The Times identified hundreds of other UCC filings with no apparent legal basis that also listed the home addresses of government officials and prominent power-brokers, effectively turning the state’s public database into a doxing tool.
In the debt claims, individuals falsely allege government officials owe them money or property, in some cases claiming ownership of the victim’s home. Other fake filings target businesses with claims of being owed cash and cars. In some cases, individuals file dozens or hundreds of fake liens. Paid online classes associated with fringe antigovernment ideologies teach people how to record UCC liens, often promoting the filings as a way to pressure perceived adversaries or falsely claiming that the filings can erase debts.
Michael Rogers, a San Diego attorney who represents auto dealers targeted by fake filings, said AB 501 would “greatly curb some of the systemic abuses used by the sovereign citizen movement and others” who file unsupported or fraudulent lien notices.
Consumer credit expert John Ulzheimer said in July that liens can complicate a person’s ability to obtain a mortgage or a company’s chances of securing lines of credit. In some cases, he said, the filings can derail job applications for positions that require thorough background checks.
Papan said her bill would restore “balance and accountability” to the UCC system, ensuring it remains a trusted commercial tool while adding protections for Californians targeted by fraudulent filings.
“We can’t allow the Uniform Commercial Code to be used as a weapon,” Papan said. “The fact that these forms are being used to damage the integrity of commercial transactions is very troubling.”
There were no stars in the October sky. No moon that 64-year-old Masuma Khan could see from the narrow window of the California City Immigration Processing Center.
“No planes,” she said, recalling her confinement.
Once a prison, the facility in the Mojave Desert, located 67 miles east of Bakersfield, reopened in April to hold people in removal proceedings, including Khan.
It was not the kind of place where she imagined ending up — not after living in the country for 28 years, caring for her daughter and surviving one of California’s deadliest wildfires, the Eaton fire.
Khan was fortunate not to have lost her west Altadena home to the Jan. 7 fire, which destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 19 people.
But in the months that followed, Khan faced another threat — deportation.
As fire recovery efforts were underway in Los Angeles, the Trump administration launched immigration raids in the city, hampering recovery efforts and creating more distress for immigrants after the fires.
Khan worried. She was in the process of adjusting her immigration status and was required to check in every year with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
An immigration attorney reassured her that there was no cause for concern: Her husband and daughter were citizens, she had no criminal record, and her case was still under review.
And so, on Oct. 6, Khan drove to downtown Los Angeles for her routine immigration check-in and found herself caught up in Trump’s deportation surge.
Eaton fire survivor Masuma Khan, 64, right, with her daughter Riya Khan and husband Isteak Khan after bring released in December.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Khan was taken into custody by ICE agents and kept in a cold room for almost an entire day. She said agents denied her access to a lawyer and a phone until she signed deportation papers. Khan resisted but later signed.
She was placed in a van with other detainees and driven three hours north to the detention center in California City. She said there was no air conditioning in the van and she became nauseous and started to experience hypertension symptoms.
At the facility she was denied access to medications for high blood pressure, asthma, peripheral arterial disease, general anxiety and hypothyroidism, she said.
Khan, who is also prediabetic, said she struggled to maintain her health at the facility. Her blood pressure spiked and she began to experience stroke-like symptoms. Her legs swelled up and she became weak.
She said the facility was so cold that people often became ill, including staff. She and other women used socks as scarves, sleeves and mittens but were threatened with fines if they continued to misuse the garments.
She said she became sick and her vision got blurry without her prescribed eye drops. Her Halal meals shifted to a medical diet that included pork, which she cannot eat because she is Muslim.
Khan’s experience at the facility was similar to that of other detainees who filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. They alleged inhumane conditions at the facility that included inadequate food, water and medical care, frigid cells and lack of access to medications and lawyers.
The California City Immigration Processing Center in Kern County, where Masuma Khan was held.
(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)
In an email response, Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, said any claims about “subprime conditions at ICE detention facilities are false.”
“All detainees are provided with proper meals, certified by dietitians, medical treatment and have the opportunities to communicate with lawyers and family members.”
Khan said she spent most days in her cell crying.
“I missed my family, I missed everything,” she said “I was frustrated.”
She often thought of home: her husband and daughter, her small garden and the birds she fed daily with seeds and oranges from her balcony.
It would be weeks before she could see her family again, before she could gaze at the mountains and hear the symphony of wildlife.
‘Like an inferno’
The Eaton fire had been raging for hours in west Altadena when Khan and her husband were awakened by evacuation alerts on their phones at 3:30 a.m.
Khan got out of bed and from her bedroom window could see flames raging in the mountains.
Khan hadn’t seen anything like it. Four years before she arrived, the Kinneloa fire, sparked by a campfire, erupted in the same mountains. It fed on dry and flammable vegetation and was driven by Santa Ana winds. It was a destructive fire.
But the Eaton fire was different. Hurricane-force winds helped spread the embers and flames deep into the town’s heart — destroying homes, schools and countless structures.
A business and vehicle are a total loss as the Eaton fire rages along Lake Avenue in Altadena on January 8, 2025.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Khan and her husband, Isteak, didn’t have time to grab much before fleeing in their car that evening.
“It was like an inferno,” Isteak Khan, 66, recalled. “You could see the embers flying everywhere. It was very chaotic.”
The couple drove about three miles south to a supermarket in Pasadena. For a month they lived at a hotel until they were allowed to return home.
When they got back the surrounding neighborhoods were in ruins: Trees were charred, cars were stripped down to metal frames and homes were gutted or left in ash.
The couple’s apartment still was standing but had suffered smoke damage and there was no electricity, no safe water to use. The couple depended on water bottles and showered at the homes of relatives.
Khan never thought she would experience such a disaster in the U.S. Then again, she didn’t journey here for her own reasons. She came to save her daughter.
‘Incredibly traumatized’
In August 1997, Khan was living in Bangladesh with her husband and their 9-year-old daughter, Riya. That month Riya had traveled with her grandparents to the U.S. to see relatives when she fell seriously ill. Doctors determined she was suffering from kidney failure and needed ongoing treatment including chemotherapy and peritoneal dialysis.
Khan traveled to the U.S. on a visitor’s visa to be with Riya. For more than a decade her daughter received treatment at the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles.
Khan became her daughter’s primary caretaker and did not return to Bangladesh as her visa was expiring. Her husband joined her in 1999 after obtaining a visa. He and Riya eventually received green cards and became citizens.
The following year, as Khan looked for legal ways to adjust her immigration status, she met a man at a Bangladeshi grocery store who befriended her and offered to help her obtain a green card, according to court records. Little did Khan know that this man — who spoke her language and was well known in the Bangladeshi community — was a scammer, one of many who prey on South Asians migrating to the U.S.
At the time Khan did not speak, read or write English well, and this man told her he could file an asylum application on her behalf, for a fee amounting to several thousand dollars.
But Khan was unaware this man had filed the application for her using a false name and listed his own address for future correspondence from immigration authorities, according to court documents.
All this came to light when she showed up for an asylum hearing in Anaheim in 1999 and responded to the questions of an asylum officer who noticed the information did not match what was in the application.
The officer denied the application, and later she was unaware of a notice to appear before an immigration court, since it had been sent to the scammer’s address.
Her absence at the hearing prompted an immigration judge to order her to be deported. Khan did not find out about the court’s action until 2015, when her husband petitioned to adjust her status so she could obtain a green card.
After the petition was denied and her case was closed because of the deportation order, Khan hired an immigration attorney who sought to reopen the case. But a judge denied it, and her appeal also was rejected by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
In February 2020, Khan was detained by ICE but released and required to check in with immigration officials. That year she hired an immigration attorney who submitted paperwork to let her stay in the U.S. The application was pending when ICE took her into custody on Oct. 6.
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said there was no reason for the government to reconsider her case, since Khan had a final removal order since 1999 and had exhausted all appeals.
“She has no legal right to be in our country,” McLaughlin said. “DHS law enforcement lawfully arrested her on Oct. 6.”
Yet Khan caught a break in early November when a federal judge ordered her released. The judge ruled the government cannot detain Khan without giving her a hearing and explaining why it needs to detain her.
It was a victory for her legal team, made up of a law firm and two nonprofit groups — the South Asian Network and Public Counsel and Hoq Law APC.
Laboni Hoq, a chief attorney on the case, said the goal is to keep Khan out of detention while the team seeks to adjust her status.
“We’re feeling like she has a shot to pursue that process … given her long history in the country and that she is law-abiding and has met all the requirements to deal with her case through the court system and immigration system,” Hoq said.
Khan’s predicament has drawn the attention of numerous Southern California politicians, including U.S. Rep. Judy Chu and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff. Much of it had to do with Khan’s 38-year-old daughter, Riya, who reached out to the lawmakers and also took to social media to bring her mother’s case to the public’s attention.
Still, it is unclear what will happen next.
As Khan’s legal fight proceeds, she must check in regularly with immigration authorities, as she did in downtown L.A. on Dec. 19, accompanied by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra), who also became aware of her case from Riya’s efforts.
“She’s incredibly traumatized by what’s happened to her,” Pérez said of Khan. “She’s scared to even participate in the community events that we have during the holidays … it’s painful, it makes me angry, it makes me sad and I just wanted to be here with her.”
At their Altadena home one recent evening, the Khans sat in their living room. Riya said the hope was that the case will be reopened so her mother can obtain a green card.
“We’re going to stay together,” Isteak said.
Not far from Masuma, old “welcome home” balloons hovered. As she sat next to her daughter, she could express only two things: “I cannot leave this country. This is my home.”
Ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro stood in a Manhattan courthouse Monday a captive criminal defendant: surrounded by heavy security, deprived of his power as a head of state and facing drug, weapon and conspiracy charges likely to keep him behind bars for years.
“I was captured,” he said in Spanish, before pleading not guilty during a brief arraignment. “I am a decent man, the president of my country.”
Just two days prior, more than 2,000 miles away in Caracas, Maduro was seated “atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking,” according to a sweeping indictment unsealed Saturday.
What preceded Maduro’s swift downfall was not just his weekend capture in what President Trump called “one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might” in U.S. history, but decades of partnership with “narco-terrorists” from Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico to enrich himself and his family through “massive-scale” cocaine trafficking, the indictment claims.
The allegations, built off a 2020 indictment, stretch back a quarter-century and implicate other Venezuelan leaders and Maduro’s wife and son. They suggest extensive coordination with notorious drug trafficking organizations and cartels from across the region, and paint a world Trump himself has long worked to instill in the minds of Americans — one in which the nation’s southern neighbors are intentionally flooding the U.S. with lethal drugs and violent criminals, to the devastation of local communities.
It is a portrait of drugs, money and violence every bit as dramatic as the nighttime raid that sent jets and helicopters into Venezuelan airspace, U.S. special forces into Maduro’s bedroom and Maduro and his wife into U.S. custody and ultimately to their arraignment in court Monday.
It appears to rely on clandestine intelligence and other witness testimony gathered over the course of decades, which Maduro’s defense team will undoubtedly seek to discredit by impugning the cast of characters — some drug traffickers themselves — whom prosecutors relied on.
Legal experts said it could take years for the case to reach trial, slowed not only by the normal nuance of litigating a multi-defendant conspiracy case but the added complexity of a prosecution that is almost certainly predicated in part on classified intelligence.
“That’s very different than a typical drug case, even a very high-level drug case, [where] you’re not going to have classified State Department cables the way you’re going to have them when you’re actually prosecuting a head of state or a former head of state,” said Renato Stabile, an attorney for former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a similar cocaine trafficking case in 2024 before being pardoned by Trump last month.
Joe McNally, the former acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, said he expects the case will take at least a year to get to trial, after prosecutors “show their cards” and Maduro’s attorneys review that evidence and seek out their own witnesses.
He said he expects a strong case from prosecutors — despite it being “not easy to prove a case that involves high level cartel activity that’s happening thousands of miles away” — that will appropriately play out entirely in public view.
“He’ll have his day in court. It’s not a military tribunal,” McNally said. “His guilt or innocence will be decided by 12 people from the district [in New York where he’s been indicted], and ultimately the burden will be on the prosecutor.”
The case against Maduro
According to the indictment, Maduro and his fellow indicted Venezuelan leaders have since about 1999 “partnered with some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world” — including the FARC and ELN groups in Colombia, the Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels in Mexico and the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela.
Trump has accused Tren de Aragua of committing violence in the U.S. and used alleged ties between it and Maduro to justify using a wartime statute to deport Venezuelans accused of being in the gang to a notorious Salvadoran prison. However, Maduro’s links to the group have been heavily questioned in the past — including by U.S. intelligence agencies — and the indictment doesn’t spell out any specific links between Maduro and Guerrero Flores.
The indictment alleges Maduro and his co-conspirators “facilitated the empowerment and growth of violent narco-terrorist groups fueling their organizations with cocaine profits,” including by providing “law enforcement cover and logistical support for the transport of cocaine through Venezuela, with knowledge that their drug trafficking partners would move the cocaine north to the United States.”
It specifically alleges that between 2006 and 2008, when he was foreign affairs minister, Maduro sold diplomatic passports to people he knew were drug traffickers, specifically so they could move drug proceeds from Mexico back to Venezuela “under diplomatic cover” and without military or law enforcement scrutinizing their flights.
It also alleges that between 2004 and 2015, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, “worked together to traffic cocaine, much of which had been previously seized by Venezuelan law enforcement, with the assistance of armed military escorts.”
It alleges the couple “maintained their own groups of state-sponsored gangs known as colectivos to facilitate and protect their drug trafficking operation,” and “ordered kidnappings, beatings, and murders against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation, including ordering the murder of a local drug boss in Caracas.”
The indictment references a half-dozen other criminal cases already brought in the U.S. against others with alleged ties to Maduro and his alleged co-conspirators, several of whom have been convicted.
What’s ahead
Stabile said the legally questionable nature of Maduro’s capture will no doubt be a factor in the criminal proceedings ahead, with his defense team likely to argue that his detention is unlawful. “That’s going to be front and center, and I assume it’s going to be the subject of a motion to dismiss,” he said.
Whether anything will come of that argument, however, is less clear, as courts in the U.S. have in the past allowed criminal proceedings to continue against individuals captured abroad, including former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega. Part of the U.S. argument for why Noriega could be prosecuted was that he was not the legitimate leader of Panama, an argument that is likely to be made in Maduro’s case, too.
Beyond that, Stabile said how the case plays out will depend on what evidence the government has against Maduro.
“Is his case just gonna be based on the testimony of sources and cooperators, which is pretty much what it was in President Hernandez’s case?” Stabile said. “Or are there recordings? Are there videos? Are there bank records? Are there text messages? Are there emails?”
McNally said he will be watching to see whom prosecutors have lined up to testify against Maduro.
“In most of the high-level narcotics trafficking cases, international narcotics trafficking cases that have been brought and go to trial, the common thread is that you end up with cooperators — individuals who were part of the conspiracy, they were the criminal partners of the defendant, and they ultimately decide, hey, it’s in my self-interest to come forward and testify,” McNally said.
“They obviously are cross-examined, and they’ll frequently be accused of … lying for their own self-interest,” he said. “But in my experience, cooperators in these types of cases are especially valuable, and the key is to then corroborate them with other witnesses who tell the same story or documentary evidence.”
Their 37-20 victory over the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday at SoFi Stadium, combined with the Atlanta Falcons’ victory over the New Orleans Saints, helped the Rams move up to the No. 5 seed for the NFC playoffs.
The Rams earned a rematch against the No. 4 seed Panthers, who defeated the Rams at Bank of America Stadium in Week 13 but are the only playoff team with a losing record (8-9). They’re seeded higher than the Rams by virtue of winning the NFC South.
Matthew Stafford passed for four touchdowns, Puka Nacua caught a touchdown pass and increased his league-leading receptions total, and the defense was just good enough as the Rams bounced back from losses at Seattle and Atlanta to finish 12-5.
The Seahawks (14-3) are seeded No. 1 and will have a first-round bye. The No. 2 Chicago Bears (11-6) play host to the No. 7 Green Bay Packers (9-7-1), and the No. 3 Philadelphia Eagles (11-6), the defending Super Bowl champions, will play host to the No. 6 San Francisco 49ers (12-5).
Cardinals quarterback Jacoby Brissett was sacked six times in a loss to the Rams at SoFi Stadium on Sunday.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Stafford started slowly, narrowly avoiding several interceptions, but came on in the second half and finished with a flourish in his last chance to make his case for his first NFL most valuable player award. He led three consecutive touchdown drives after the Rams fell behind 20-16 in the third quarter.
Stafford completed 25 of 40 passes for 259 yards and connected with tight end Colby Parkinson for two touchdowns and Nacua and tight end Tyler Higbee for one each.
Stafford finished with a league-leading 46 touchdown passes and 4,707 yards passing.
Stafford’s second-quarter touchdown pass to Nacua was his 43rd of the season and the 420th of his 17-year career, tying Dan Marino for seventh all time. Stafford took over sole possession of seventh place with a touchdown pass to Parkinson late in the third quarter.
Rams quarterback Matt Stafford passed for four touchdowns against the Arizona Cardinals at SoFi Stadium Sunday.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Nacua went into the game tied with Cardinals tight end Trey McBride and Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba for the NFL lead with 119 catches. Nacua caught 10 passes for 76 yards. McBride caught seven passes for 65 yards.
Ahkello Witherspoon intercepted a pass and Byron Young, Jared Verse, Braden Fiske, Josaiah Stewart and Desjuan Johnson had sacks for the Rams.
The last time the Rams traveled to Charlotte to play the Panthers, on Nov. 30, the Rams’ six-game winning streak ended with a 31-28 defeat that knocked them out of the No. 1 seed.
Stafford had two passes intercepted — ending an eight-game stretch without one — and also was responsible for a crucial delay-of-game penalty and a lost fumble.
Panthers quarterback Bryce Young passed for three touchdowns, and the Panthers amassed 164 yards rushing.
But the Panthers will not enter the playoffs with momentum: They lost 16-14 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their regular-season finale, committing three turnovers and rushing for just 19 yards.
The Rams did not come out much stronger Sunday, but by the end of the first half they built a 16-6 lead on three field goals by Harrison Mevis and Nacua’s spectacular, one-handed catch on a fourth-and-one play in the end zone.
Early in the third quarter the Cardinals executed a fake punt that resulted in a 28-yard completion, and then Jacoby Brissett connected with receiver Michael Wilson for a 43-yard touchdown pass that pulled the Cardinals to within three points.
The Cardinals took the lead late in the third quarter on Brissett’s touchdown pass to tight end Josiah Deguara. But Stafford’s 21-yard touchdown pass to Parkinson at the end of the quarter put the Rams ahead, 23-20.
Stafford’s 22-yard touchdown pass to Higbee early in the fourth quarter all but sealed the victory. It was his first game back after missing six weeks because of an ankle injury, and his five catches for 91 yards were season highs.
The Rams are getting healthier as they enter the playoffs. McVay said last week that safety Quentin Lake would return from an elbow injury and play against the Cardinals, but the Rams chose to give him one more week. Star receiver Davante Adams was inactive because of a hamstring injury but is expected to be ready for the playoffs. Offensive lineman Kevin Dotson also could return.
Embattled Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted of obstruction last month for helping an immigrant evade federal officers, has sent her resignation letter to the governor.
The letter was sent Saturday. Republicans had been making plans to impeach her since her Dec. 19 conviction. A spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers said his office received Dugan’s letter, and he would work to fill the vacancy without delay.
Dugan wrote that over the last decade she handled thousands of cases with “a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberately and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves.”
But she said the case against her is too big of a distraction.
“As you know, I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary. I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary,” Dugan said in her letter.
Last April, federal prosecutors accused Dugan of distracting federal officers trying to arrest a Mexican immigrant outside her courtroom and leading the man out through a private door. A federal jury convicted her of felony obstruction.
The case against Dugan was highlighted by President Trump as he pressed ahead with his sweeping immigration crackdown. Democrats insisted the administration was trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.
Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos praised Dugan’s decision.
“I’m glad Dugan did the right thing by resigning and followed the clear direction from the Wisconsin Constitution,” Vos said.
Democrat Ann Jacobs, who is chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission board, said she agreed with Dugan that Milwaukee should have a permanent judge in place while this fight plays out.
“Despite her situation, she is ever the champion of justice, wanting to remove the judiciary from a political battle over her fate. I’m sure this is terribly hard for her but she is true to her faith and her principles,” Jacobs said in a post on X.
On April 18, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.
Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and directed them to the office of her boss, Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley, because she told them their administrative warrant wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest Flores-Ruiz.
After the agents left, she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.
Eric Neff’s tenure at the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office ended after he was placed on administrative leave in 2022 over accusations of misconduct in the prosecution of the CEO of Konnech, a software company that election conspiracy theorists said was in the thrall of the Chinese government.
Now, three years later, Neff is serving as one of the Trump administration’s top election watchdogs.
Late last year , his name began appearing on lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, listed as “acting chief” of the voting section.
Neff’s appointment, first reported by Mother Jones, has prompted renewed scrutiny of his work at the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
The Times interviewed several of Neff’s former colleagues, who revealed new details about claims of misconduct that emerged from the Konnech case, and said they were alarmed that someone with almost no background in federal election law was named to a senior position.
Neff led the 2022 investigation of Konnech, a tiny Michigan company whose software is used by election officials in several major cities. In a criminal complaint, Neff accused the company’s CEO, Eugene Yu, of fraud and embezzlement, alleging the company stored poll worker information on a server based in China, a violation of its contract with the L.A. County registrar’s office.
Six weeks after a complaint was filed, prosecutors dropped the case and launched an investigation into “irregularities” and bias in the way evidence was presented against Konnech, the D.A.’s office said in a 2022 statement.
The internal probe was focused on accusations that Neff misled supervisors at the district attorney’s office about the role of election deniers in his investigation, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the case who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Neff also allegedly withheld information about potential biases in the case from a grand jury, according to the two officials.
In a civil lawsuit filed last year, Neff said the internal review by the D.A.’s office cleared him of wrongdoing. The two officials familiar with the probe who spoke on the condition of anonymity disputed Neff’s characterization of the findings.
A spokesman for Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman declined to comment or provide the results of the investigation into Neff, which the officials said was conducted by an outside law firm that generated a report on the case. Neff’s attorney also did not provide a copy of the report.
A Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment.
Neff’s attorney, Tom Yu — no relation to the Konnech CEO — said his client had no obligation to provide background information about the origins of the case to the grand jury.
Neff’s appointment comes as President Trump continues to remake the DOJ in his own image by appointing political loyalists with no criminal law background as U.S. attorneys in New Jersey and Virginia and seeking prosecutions of his political enemies, such as former FBI Director James Comey.
Trump has never recanted his false claim that he won the 2020 election.
When then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced the charges against Konnech in 2020, Trump said the progressive prosecutor would become a “National hero on the Right if he got to the bottom of this aspect of the Voting Fraud.”
The Konnech case was centered on contract fraud, not voter fraud or ballot rigging. Six weeks after the charges were filed, the case disintegrated.
The D.A.’s office cited Neff’s over-reliance on evidence provided by True the Vote, the group that pushed the unfounded Chinese government conspiracies about Konnech and also appeared in a film that spread claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Gascón initially denied that True the Vote was involved in the case, but weeks later, a D.A.’s office spokesman said a report from the group’s co-founder, Gregg Phillips, sparked the prosecution. Phillips testified in court in July 2022 that it was Neff who first contacted him about Konnech.
The two officials who spoke to The Times said that Neff withheld True the Vote’s role from high-level D.A.’s office staff, including Gascón, when presenting the case.
Gascón declined an interview request, noting he is named in Neff’s pending lawsuit, which is slated for trial in early 2026.
Neff’s attorney insisted the case against Konnech was solid.
“He was let go because Trump tweeted a statement of ‘Go George Go’,” the attorney said. “That’s why Eugene Yu was let go. Because Gascón was so scared he was going to lose votes.”
Calls and emails to an attorney who previously represented Eugene Yu were not returned.
In his lawsuit, Neff claimed he had evidence that “Konnech used third-party contractors based in China and failed to abide by security procedures” to protect L.A. County poll worker data. The evidence was not attached as an exhibit in the lawsuit.
A DOJ spokesperson declined to describe Neff’s job duties. His name appears on a number of lawsuits filed in recent months against states that have refused to turn over voter registration lists to the Trump administration.
Neff is also involved in a suit filed against the Fulton County clerk’s office in Georgia seeking records related to the 2020 election, records show.
“We will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws,” Asst. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, the California conservative who now leads the civil rights division, said in a recent statement. “If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
Dhillon declined to comment through a DOJ spokesman.
The voting section “enforces the civil provisions of the federal laws that protect the right to vote, including the Voting Rights Act,” according to the DOJ’s website.
It does not appear that Neff has any background working on cases related to federal election law. He first became an L.A. County prosecutor in 2013 and spent years handling local crime cases out of the Pomona courthouse. He was promoted and reassigned to the Public Integrity Division, which investigates corruption issues, in 2020, according to his lawsuit.
While there, he handled only two prosecutions related to elections. One was the Konnech case. The other involved allegations of election rigging against a Compton city council member.
In August 2021, Isaac Galvan, a Democrat, was charged with conspiring to commit election fraud after he allegedly worked to direct voters from outside his council district to cast ballots for him. Galvan won the race by just one vote, but was booted from office when a judge determined at least four improper ballots had been cast.
Galvan’s criminal case is still pending; he recently pleaded guilty to charges in a separate corruption and bribery case in federal court. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said there was no overlap between the D.A.’s election rigging case and the bribery case against Galvan. Federal prosecutors are not reviewing the Konnech case, the spokesman said.
Court filings show Neff was involved in Galvan’s L.A. County case, but the prosecution was led by a more senior attorney.
Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School who served in the civil rights division during the Obama administration, said section chiefs normally have decades of experience in the area of law they’re meant to supervise.
“The biggest problem with somebody with Neff’s history is the giant screaming red flag that involves filing a prosecution based on unreliable evidence,” Levitt said. “That’s not something any prosecutor should do.”
Neff’s attorney, Yu, scoffed at the idea that his client was not experienced enough for his new role in the Trump administration, or that he was selected due to his involvement in the Konnech case.
“Eric got the job because he’s qualified to get the job. He didn’t get the job for any other reason. He got the job because he’s an excellent advocate,” Yu said. “I think the Justice Department is very fortunate to have Eric.”
Times Staff Writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of federal immigration judges in California have been fired, retired or quit since the start of the Trump administration.
The reduction follows a trend in immigration courts nationwide and constitutes, critics say, an attack on the rule of law that will lead to yet more delays in an overburdened court system.
The reduction in immigration judges has come as the administration scaled up efforts to deport immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Trump administration officials have described the immigration court process, in which proceedings can take years amid a backlog of millions of cases, as an impediment to their goals.
Nationwide, there were 735 immigration judges last fiscal year, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the arm of the Justice Department that houses immigration courts. At least 97 have been fired since President Trump took office and about the same number have resigned or retired, according to the union representing immigration judges.
California has lost at least 35 immigration judges since January, according to Mobile Pathways, a Berkeley-based organization that analyzes immigration court data. That’s down from 132. The steepest drop occurred at the San Francisco Immigration Court, which has lost more than half its bench.
“A noncitizen might win their case, might lose their case, but the key question is, did they receive a hearing?” said Emmett Soper, who worked at the Justice Department before becoming an immigration judge in Virginia in 2017. “Up until this administration, I had always been confident that I was working in a system that, despite its flaws, was fundamentally fair.”
Our government institutions are losing their legitimacy
— Amber George, former San Francisco Immigration Court judge
The administration intends to fill some judge positions, and in new immigration judge job listings in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere seeks candidates who want to be a “deportation judge” and “restore integrity and honor to our Nation’s Immigration Court system.”
The immigration judges union called the job listings “insulting.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social in April that he was elected to “remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that.”
“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” he added.
The National Assn. of Immigration Judges said it expects a wave of additional retirements at the end of this month.
“My biggest concern is for the people whose lives are left in limbo. What can they count on when the ground is literally shifting every moment that they’re here?” said Amber George, who was fired last month from the San Francisco Immigration Court. “Our government institutions are losing their legitimacy.”
Because immigration courts operate under the Justice Department, their priorities typically shift from one presidential administration to the next, but the extreme changes taking place have renewed longtime calls for immigration courts to become independent of the executive branch.
The Trump administration recently added 36 judges; 25 of them are military lawyers serving in temporary positions.
This summer, the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to work for the Department of Justice. That took place after the department changed the requirements for temporary immigration judges, removing the need for immigration law experience.
The Department of Justice did not respond to specific questions, but said judges must be impartial and that the agency is obligated to take action against those who demonstrate systemic bias.
Former judges say that, because terminations have happened with no advance notice, remaining court staff have often scrambled to get up to speed on reassigned cases.
Ousted judges described a pattern: In the afternoon, sometimes while presiding over a hearing, they receive a short email stating that they are being terminated pursuant to Article II of the Constitution. Their names are swiftly removed from the Justice Department website.
Jeremiah Johnson is one of five judges terminated recently from the San Francisco Immigration Court.
Johnson said he worries the Trump administration is circumventing immigration courts by making conditions so unbearable that immigrants decide to drop their cases.
The number of detained immigrants has climbed to record levels since January, with more than 65,000 in custody. Immigrants and lawyers say the conditions are inhumane, alleging medical neglect, punitive solitary confinement and obstructed access to legal counsel. Requests by immigrants for voluntary departure, which avoids formal deportation, have surged in recent months.
Many of those arrests have happened at courthouses, causing immigrants to avoid their legal claims out of fear of being detained and forcing judges to order them removed in absentia.
“Those are ways to get people to leave the United States without seeing a judge, without due process that Congress has provided,” Johnson said. “It’s a dismantling of the court system.”
A sign posted outside the San Francisco Immigration Court in October protests enforcement actions by immigration agents. The court has lost more than half of its immigration judges.
(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
The judges in San Francisco’s Immigration Court have historically had higher asylum approval rates than the national average. Johnson said grant rates depend on a variety of circumstances, including whether a person is detained or has legal representation, their country of origin and whether they are adults or children.
In November, the military judges serving in immigration courts heard 286 cases and issued rulings in 110, according to Mobile Pathways. The military judges issued deportation orders in 78% of the cases — more often than other immigration judges that month, who ordered deportations in 63% of cases.
“They’re probably following directions — and the military is very good at following directions — and it’s clear what their directions are that are given by this administration,” said Mobile Pathways co-founder Bartlomiej Skorupa. He cautioned that 110 cases are a small sample size and that trends will become clearer in the coming months.
Former immigration judges and their advocates say that appointing people with no immigration experience and little training makes for a steep learning curve and the possibility of due process violations.
“There are multiple concerns here: that they’re temporary, which could expose them to greater pressure to decide cases in a certain way; and also they lack experience in immigration law, which is an extremely complex area of practice,” said Ingrid Eagly, an immigration law professor at UCLA.
Immigration courts have a backlog of more than 3 million cases. Anam Petit, who served as an immigration judge in Virginia until September, said the administration’s emphasis on speedy case completions has to be balanced against the constitutional right to a fair hearing.
“There are not enough judges to hear those cases, and this administration [is] taking it upon themselves to fire a lot of experienced and trained judges who can hear those cases and can mitigate that backlog,” she said.
Complementary bills introduced in the U.S. Senate and House this month by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) would prevent the appointment of military lawyers as temporary immigration judges and impose a two-year limit of service.
“The Trump administration’s willingness to fire experienced immigration judges and hire inexperienced or temporary ‘deportation judges,’ especially in places like California, has fundamentally impacted the landscape of our justice system,” Schiff said in a statement announcing the bill.
The bills have little chance in the Republican-controlled Congress but illustrate how significantly Democrats — especially in California — oppose the administration’s changes to immigration courts.
Former Immigration Judge Tania Nemer, a dual citizen of Lebanon and the U.S., sued the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi this month, alleging that she was illegally terminated in February because of her gender, ethnic background and political affiliation. In 2023, Nemer ran for judicial office in Ohio as a Democrat.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, seen here at the White House in October, has dismissed complaints by a former immigration judge who alleged she was fired without cause.
“Most recently, yesterday, I was sued by an immigration judge who we fired,” she said Dec. 2. “One of the reasons she said she was a woman. Last I checked, I was a woman as well.”
Other former judges have challenged their terminations through the federal Merit Systems Protection Board.
Johnson, of San Francisco, is one of those. He filed his appeal this month, claiming that he was not given cause for termination.
“My goal is to be reinstated,” he said. “My colleagues on the bench, our court was vibrant. It was a good place to work, despite all the pressures.”
PROSECUTORS at the helm of the murder case against Nick Reiner have a chance to pull a “historically uncommon” move if they pursue the death penalty, an attorney has warned.
Nick Reiner pictured at the premiere of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles on September 9Credit: APMichele Singer Reiner and Rob Reiner attend The Wolf Of Wall Street premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City in December 2013Credit: GettyNick Reiner, wearing a blue anti-suicide vest, made his first court appearance on December 17 days after he allegedly killed his parents, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer ReinerCredit: Reuters
A plea was not entered, as defense attorney Alan Jackson told the judge that the case against Nick was premature.
Eric Faddis, a criminal defense attorney based in Colorado, believes Nick’s legal team is teeing up for an insanity defense down the road, which he suspects they could have a hard time trying to prove.
“In order to prove that, how that works is that the defense would have to prove it’s more likely than not that [Nick] Reiner had a mental disease or defect, which caused him to not know the difference between right or wrong or to not understand the nature of his conduct,” Faddis, who is not associated with the case, told The U.S. Sun.
“So, that’s a high bar. It’s not like in the movies where people get off on insanity regularly. Prevailing on a not guilty by reason of insanity defense is uncommon. But it’s still certainly possible.”
Nick had been diagnosed with schizophrenia some time before he allegedly slaughtered his parents, according to TMZ.
The troubled middle child of Reiner, 78, and Singer, 68, was reportedly being treated by a psychiatrist for his condition, but in the month before the murders, Nick’s behavior became “alarming” as doctors switched his medication.
Weeks before the murders, Nick’s prescription was changed, making him “erratic and dangerous,” TMZ reported.
Nick had been open about his struggles with drug addiction, and admitted in a 2016 interview with People that he had been to rehab dozens of times since he was 15 years old.
Faddis said the claims of Nick’s reported mental health disorder could be “supportive of a not guilty by reason of insanity defense.”
“Doesn’t mean he’ll win, but it sounds like they’re compiling evidence in support of that defense,” he added.
UNCOMMON PURSUIT
Nick has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said he has not decided whether his office will pursue the death penalty against Nick.
However, Faddis said with Hochman at the helm, it would not be surprising if the district attorney sought to sentence Nick to death.
“It’s hard to say. Historically, Los Angeles has not been the most death penalty-friendly county,” Faddis said.
“It’s not something they pursue commonly, as compared to like Utah or something like that.
“But, with Nathan Hochman at the helm, you know, he has made some unexpected moves on different cases, including the Menendez brothers’ case that he was on.
“There was sort of this social movement to try and get the Menendez brothers released. And I think a lot of people thought perhaps Hochman would go along with that, but he didn’t.”
“So, if he did pursue the death penalty in this case, it would be historically uncommon, but not totally unexpected just based on how Hochman has made decisions in other cases.”
Rob Reiner and his son Nick pictured together at the 2015 Toronto International Film FestivalCredit: SplashThe Reiner family from front to back: Jake Reiner, Michele Singer Reiner, Romy Reiner, Rob Reiner, and Nick ReinerCredit: Instagram/michelereinerAn aerial view of Rob Reiner’s home in Brentwood in Los AngelesCredit: EPA
HOLLYWOOD NIGHTMARE
Reiner and Singer died minutes after they were allegedly brutally attacked by their son, according to their death certificates.
The iconic filmmaker’s time of death was recorded as 3:45 pm on December 14, while his wife’s was noted as 3:46 pm.
The grisly scene at Reiner’s Brentwood home was only uncovered after a massage therapist arrived at the couple’s front gate for a scheduled appointment on the afternoon of December 14, according to The New York Times.
After the therapist received no answer at the front gate, she decided to call the couple’s daughter, Romy, who reportedly lived in the area.
When Romy, 27, arrived and entered her parents’ home, she stumbled upon the gruesome scene and reportedly came across her father’s body first.
Reiner and Singer were found in their bed with their throats slashed and could have been asleep when they were murdered, the Daily Mail reported.
When Los Angeles police arrived at the scene at around 3:30 pm, Romy told authorities that her brother Nick lived in their parents’ home.
However, authorities were unable to locate Nick on the property.
Nick was eventually arrested at around 9:15 pm near Exposition Park, about 14 miles from where his parents were found dead, Alan Hamilton, the deputy police chief at the LAPD, said.
Moments later, after exiting the gas station, the video captured three police cruisers swarming Nick at a nearby sidewalk.
Nick was seen raising his hands and surrendering to police as multiple officers approached him and took him into custody.
Timeline of Rob and Michele Reiner’s death
Rob Reiner and his wife of Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their Los Angeles home on December 14, 2025.
Timeline:
December 13, 2025: Reiner and his wife Michele attended a holiday party on the evening of December 13 with their son, Nick.
Sources conveyed to The U.S. Sun that the couple and their son were engaged in a heated public argument while at the event.
December 14, 2025: Reiner and Michele were found dead in their Brentwood home in Los Angeles at around 3:30 pm PST.
The couple’s daughter, Romy, reportedly discovered her parents’ bodies.
Online police records show Reiner and Michele’s 32-year-old son, Nick, was arrested at 9:15 pm PST on December 14.
December 15, 2025: Authorities in Los Angeles announce that Nick Reiner was arrested and charged with murder.
Nick was booked into a Los Angeles jail at 5:04 am and was being held on $4 million bail, which was later revoked.
December 16, 2025: Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman formally charged Nick Reiner with two counts of first-degree murder.
Hochman said his office would consider the death penalty in Nick’s case.
Nick’s scheduled court appearance on December 16 was postponed due to what his attorney said was a procedural issue.
December 17, 2025: Nick Reiner briefly appeared in court. A plea was not entered.
December 23, 2025: The death certificates of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner disclosed that the couple died of multiple sharp force injuries caused with “a knife, by another.”
Re “Bush Order Lets Him Control Roberts’ Memos,” Aug. 11
I’m not being facetious: I really don’t understand. Please write an editorial and explain to me why, unless it’s truly a matter of national security, should any president be allowed to control access to a former president’s documents that were discharged as part of his official duties? Even the claim of lawyerclient privilege is specious unless it is from consultations with the president’s private, non-taxpayer-paid attorney. Otherwise, the public has retained the legal representatives, so any citizen should be allowed — in fact, have a right — to see the lawyers’ notes.
TOM OGDEN
Hollywood
*
Re “Roberts, misjudged,” Opinion, Aug. 11
Defending John Roberts’ 1980s position on the Voting Rights Act, Abigail Thernstrom argues that race should not be an issue in political districting. She quotes Roberts’ claim that we stand before the law “only as Americans” and Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch’s claim that officials should “represent individual citizens” and not blocs. The sentiments are sure uplifting but ingenuous.
Citizens should stand before laws they have had some effect in creating and be represented by officials they have had some effect in electing. To prevent tyranny by the majority, minority interests should be represented in office, and not only racial interests, but also economic and demographic ones.
A wag in The Times’ Opinion section recently proposed that all political districting be based entirely on income levels, not geography. The proposal is amusing, but not entirely wrong.
Are top-drawer college football teams and their name, image and likeness collectives simply trying to protect themselves from willy-nilly transfers or are they bullying players to stay put with threats of lawsuits?
Adding liquidated damage fee clauses to NIL contracts became all the rage in 2025, a year that will be remembered as the first time players have been paid directly by schools. But some experts say such fees cannot be used as a cudgel to punish players that break a contract and transfer.
It’s no surprise that the issue has resulted in a lawsuit — make that two lawsuits — before the calendar flipped to 2026.
Less than a month after Georgia filed a lawsuit against defensive end Damon Wilson II to obtain $390,000 in damages because he transferred to Missouri, Wilson went to court himself, claiming Georgia is misusing the liquidated damages clause to “punish Wilson for entering the portal.”
Wilson’s countersuit in Boone County, Mo., says he was among a small group of Bulldog stars pressured into signing the contract Dec. 21, 2024. The lawsuit also claims that Wilson was misused as an elite pass rusher, that the Georgia defensive scheme called for him to drop back into pass coverage. Wilson, who will be a senior next fall, led Missouri with nine sacks this season.
Georgia paid Wilson $30,000, the first monthly installment of his $500,000 NIL deal, before he entered the transfer portal on Jan. 6, four days after Georgia lost to Notre Dame in a College Football Playoffs quarterfinal.
Bulldogs brass was not pleased. Wilson alleges in his lawsuit that Georgia dragged its feet in putting his name in the portal and spread misinformation to other schools about him and his contractual obligations.
“When the University of Georgia Athletic Association enters binding agreements with student-athletes, we honor our commitments and expect student-athletes to do the same,” Georgia spokesperson Steven Drummond said in a statement after the school filed the lawsuit.
Wilson’s countersuit turned that comment on its head, claiming it injured his reputation because it implies he was dishonest. He is seeking unspecified damages in addition to not owing the Bulldogs anything. Georgia’s lawsuit asked that the dispute be resolved through arbitration.
A liquidated damage fee is a predetermined amount of money written into a contract that one party pays the other for specific breaches. The fee is intended to provide a fair estimate of anticipated losses when actual damages are difficult to calculate, and cannot be used to punish one party for breaking the contract.
Wilson’s case could have far-reaching implications because it is the first that could determine whether schools can enforce liquidated damage clauses. While it could be understandable that schools want to protect themselves from players transferring soon after receiving NIL money, legal experts say liquidated damage fees might not be the proper way to do so.
Other countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Ireland, Mexico, Spain and Turkiye, have already joined the case in The Hague.
Published On 23 Dec 202523 Dec 2025
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Belgium has formally joined the case launched by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
In a statement on Tuesday, the ICJ – The Hague-based highest court of the United Nations – said Belgium had filed a declaration of intervention in the case.
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Other countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Ireland, Mexico, Spain and Turkiye, have already joined the proceedings.
South Africa brought the case in December 2023, arguing that Israel’s war in Gaza violates the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Israel has rejected the allegations and criticised the case.
While a final ruling could take years, the ICJ issued provisional measures in January 2024 ordering Israel to take steps to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and to allow unimpeded access for humanitarian aid.
The court’s orders are legally binding although it has no direct mechanism to enforce them.
The ICJ also said Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and its policies amount to annexation.
Israel has continued its assaults in Gaza and the occupied West Bank despite the rulings and growing international criticism while advancing plans to seize large parts of Palestinian territory.
Meanwhile, the United States and several of its European allies continue to provide military and financial support to Israel.
Washington has rejected the merits of South Africa’s case, and US lawmakers have criticised the country and issued threats against it.
The US has also imposed sanctions on members of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Belgium was also among a group of countries that recognised the State of Palestine in September. Nearly 80 percent of UN member states now recognise Palestine.
Since a ceasefire began on October 10, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said, Israel has killed at least 406 Palestinians and injured 1,118 in the enclave. Since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, the ministry said, at least 70,942 Palestinians have been killed and 171,195 wounded.
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for former CIA Director John Brennan want the Justice Department to be prevented from steering an investigation of him and other former government officials to a “favored” judge in Florida who dismissed the classified documents case against President Trump.
The request Monday is addressed to U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga, the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida, where federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation related to the U.S. government assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Brennan and other officials have received subpoenas, and his lawyers say Brennan has been advised by prosecutors that he’s a target of the investigation.
Brennan’s lawyers say the Justice Department is engaged in “judge shopping” and trying to arrange for the case to be handled by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who issued favorable rulings to Trump during the classified documents case and dismissed it last year. The letter asks Altonaga to exercise her “supervisory authority” as chief judge to ensure that the Justice Department is unable to steer the current election interference investigation into her courtroom.
“In short, we are seeking assurance that any litigation arising out of this grand jury proceeding will be heard by a judge who is selected by the court’s neutral and impartial processes, not by the prosecution’s self-interested maneuvering contrary to the interests of justice,” wrote Brennan’s attorneys, Kenneth Wainstein and Natasha Harnwell-Davis. The New York Times earlier reported on the letter.
It remains unclear what crime prosecutors in Florida believe was committed, but the subpoenas issued last month to Brennan and other former law enforcement and intelligence officials sought documents related to the preparation of the Obama administration’s intelligence community assessment, made public in January 2017, that detailed how Russia waged a covert influence campaign to help Trump defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump was investigated but not charged during his first term over whether his campaign conspired with Russia to tip the outcome of the election. He has long sought retribution over the Russia investigation and the officials who played a key part in it.
His Justice Department in September secured a false-statement and obstruction indictment against James Comey, the FBI director at the time the Russia investigation was launched, though the case was dismissed and its future is in doubt because of a judge’s ruling that blocked prosecutors from accessing materials they considered to be key evidence.
Brennan’s lawyers say the Trump administration’s Justice Department tried to “forum-shop” the investigation into Brennan to multiple jurisdictions, including Pennsylvania, before settling in Florida. But they say prosecutors have been unable to answer basic questions about why Florida is a proper venue for the investigation given that the intelligence community assessment at issue was produced by officials in the Washington, D.C., area.
The grand jury investigation is based in the Miami division of the Southern District of Florida, but Brennan’s lawyers say they’re concerned that the Trump administration may be poised to transfer the case to the smaller Fort Pierce division, where Cannon is the only judge. They cited as a basis for that alarm a Justice Department decision to seek an additional grand jury in Fort Pierce even though there’s no apparent caseload need.
“The United States Attorney’s efforts to funnel this investigation to the judge who issued this string of rulings that consistently favored President Trump’s positions in previous litigations should be seen for what it is,” Brennan’s lawyers wrote.
Walking out of a Skid Row market, Harold Cook, 42, decides to play a game.
How long after opening YouTube will it take for him to see an ad asking him to join the latest wave of sex abuse litigation against Los Angeles County?
“I can literally turn my phone on right now, something’s going to pop up,” said Cook, opening the app.
Within a few seconds, a message blares: “They thought you’d never speak up. They figured you was too young, too scared, too Black, too brown, too alone. … L.A. County already had to cough up $4 billion to settle these cases. So why not you?”
Since the historic April payout to resolve thousands of claims of sex abuse in county-run facilities, law firms have saturated L.A.’s airwaves and social media with campaigns seeking new clients. For months, government officials have quietly questioned who is financing the wall-to-wall marketing blitz.
The ad Cook heard was from Sheldon Law Group, one of several law firms active in sex abuse litigation in California that receive backing from private investors, according to loan notices and SEC filings. The investors, which often operate through Delaware companies, expect to profit from the payouts to resolve the cases.
Sheldon, based in Washington, D.C., has been one of the most prolific L.A. advertisers. The firm has already gathered roughly 2,500 potential clients, according to a list submitted to the county. The lawsuits started being filed this summer, raising the prospect of another costly settlement squeezed out of a government on the brink of a fiscal crisis.
“We act in the best interests of our clients, who are victims in every sense of the word and have suffered real and quite dreadful injuries,” a spokesperson for Sheldon Law Group said in a statement. “Without financial and legal support, these victims would be unable to hold the responsible parties, powerful corporate or governmental defendants, accountable.”
The financing deals have raised alarms among lawmakers, who say they want to know what portion of the billions poised to be diverted from government services to victims of horrific sex abuse will go to opaque private investors.
Kathryn Barger, a member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, said she was contacted by a litigation investor who sought to gauge whether sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. “This is so predatory,” Barger told The Times.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
“I’m getting calls from the East Coast asking me if people should invest in bankrupting L.A. County,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said. “I understand people want to make money, but I feel like this is so predatory.”
Barger said an old college friend who invests in lawsuits reached out this spring attempting to gauge whether L.A. County sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. Barger said the caller referred to the lawsuits as an “evergreen” investment.
“That means it keeps on giving,” she said. “There’s no end to it.”
The county has spent nearly $5 billion this year on sex abuse litigation, with the bulk of that total coming from the $4-billion deal this spring — the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.
The April settlement is under investigation by the L.A. County district attorney office following Times reporting that found plaintiffs who said they were paid by recruiters to join the litigation, including some who said they filed fraudulent claims. All were represented by Downtown LA Law Group, which handled roughly 2,700 plaintiffs.
Downtown LA Law Group has denied all wrongdoing and said it “only wants justice for real victims.” The firm took out a bank loan in summer 2024, according to a financing statement, but a spokesperson said they had no investor financing.
Lawyers who take the private financing say it’s a win-win. Investors make money on high-interest rate loans while smaller law firms have the capital they need to take on deep-pocketed corporations and governments. If people were victimized by predators on the county’s payroll, they deserve to have a law firm that can afford to work for free until the case settles. Money for investors, they emphasize, comes out of their cut — not the clients’.
But critics say the flow of outside money incentivizes law firms to amass as many plaintiffs as possible for the wrong reasons — not to spread access to justice, but rather ensure hefty profit for themselves and their financial backers.
“The amount of money being generated by private equity in these situations — that’s absurd,” said former state lawmaker Lorena Gonzalez, who wrote the 2019 bill that opened the floodgate for older sex abuse claims to be filed. “Nobody should be getting wealthy off taxpayer dollars.”
For residents of L.A.’s poorest neighborhood, ads touting life-changing payouts have started to feel inescapable.
Waiting in line at a Skid Row food shelter, William Alexander, 27, said his YouTube streaming is punctuated by commercials featuring a robotic man he suspects is AI calling on him to sue the county over sex abuse.
Across the street, Shane Honey, 56, said nearly every commercial break on the news seems to feature someone asking if he was neglected at a juvenile hall.
In many of the ads, the same name pops up: Sheldon Law Group.
Austin Trapp, a case worker in Skid Row, was among several people in the neighborhood who said ads seeking people to join sex abuse litigation against L.A. County have become increasingly common.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Sheldon’s website lists no attorneys, but claims the firm is the “architect” behind “some of the largest litigations on Earth.” They list their headquarters online at a D.C. virtual office space, though the owners on their most recent business filing list their own addresses in New York. The firm’s name appears on websites hunting for people suffering from video game addiction, exposure to toxins from 9/11, and toe implant failure.
Sheldon Law Group was started by the founder of Legal Recovery Associates, a New York litigation funding company that uses money from investors including hedge funds to recruit large numbers of plaintiffs for “mass torts,” cases where many people are suing over the same problem, according to interviews with former advisers, court records and business filings.
Those clients are gathered for one of their affiliated law firms, including Sheldon Law Group, according to two people involved in past transactions.
Ron Lasorsa, a former Wall Street investment banker who said he advised Legal Recovery Associates on setting up the affiliate law firms, told The Times it was built to make investors “obscenely rich.”
“It’s extremely profitable for people who know what the hell they’re doing,” Lasorsa said.
The idea, he says, emerged from a pool cabana at a Las Vegas legal conference called Mass Torts Made Perfect in fall 2015.
A man visiting friends on Skid Row holds up his phone showing an ad recruiting clients for sex abuse case in Los Angeles County on December 11, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Lasorsa had just amassed 14,000 clients for personal injury lawsuits in one year using methods that, he now says, were legally dubious. A favorite at the time: using call centers in India that had access to Americans’ hospital records and phoning the patients to see if they were feeling litigious.
Near the pool at a Vegas hotel, Lasorsa said Howard Berger, a former hedge fund manager barred by the SEC from working as a broker, asked if he could turbocharge the caseload of Legal Recovery Associates, where he worked as a consultant.
Lasorsa said he soon teamed up with the founders of LRA — Gary Podell, a real estate developer, and Greg Goldberg, a former investment manager — to create “shell” law firms based in Washington. The nation’s capital is one of the few places where non-lawyers can own a law firm, profiting directly from case proceeds.
Goldberg, who is not licensed to practice law in D.C., would become a partner in at least six D.C. law firms including Sheldon Law Group by 2017, according to a contract between Legal Recovery Associates and a hedge fund that financed the firms’ cases.
Sheldon, which said it was responding on behalf of Podell, said in a statement that all their partners are lawyers, though declined to name them. Goldberg did not respond to a repeated request for comment.
The Sheldon spokesperson said Legal Recovery Associates is a separate entity that engages in its “own business and legal activities.”
Investors typically make money on litigation by providing law firms with loans, which experts say carry interest rates as high as 30%, representing the risk involved. If the case goes south, investors get nothing. If it settles, they make it all back — and then some.
Lasorsa said he helped the company gather 20,000 claims using the same Indian call centers before a bitter 2019 split. He later accused the owners of unethical behavior, which led to a half-million dollar settlement and a non-disparagement agreement that he said he decided to breach, leading to a roughly $600,000 penalty he has yet to pay, according to a court judgment.
Lasorsa was also ordered to delete any disparaging statements he’d made, according to the judgment.
D.C. law firms with non-lawyers as partners must have the “sole purpose” of providing “legal services,” according to the district’s bar. Some attorneys have argued no such service was provided by the firms associated with Legal Recovery Associates.
Troy Brenes, an Orange County attorney who co-counseled with one of the firms over flawed medical devices, accused the company of operating a “sham law firm” as part of a 2022 court battle over fees.
“The sole purpose … appears to have been to allow non-lawyers to market for product liability cases and then refer those cases to legitimate law firms in exchange for a portion of the attorney fees without making any effort to comply with the D.C. ethics rules,” Brenes wrote.
A spokesperson for Sheldon and LRA noted in a statement that “no court or arbitration panel has ever concluded” that its business structure violates the law.
In the medical device cases, the affiliate firm, which was responsible for funding the marketing campaign, took 55% of recoverable attorney fees, according to an agreement between the two firms. The profit divide mirrors the 55/45 breakdown between Sheldon Law Group and James Harris Law, a two-person Seattle firm they have partnered with on the L.A. County sex abuse cases, according to a retainer agreement reviewed by The Times.
A person on Skid Row in downtown L.A. shows an ad on their phone seeking plaintiffs to joint a lawsuit over sexual abuse in juvenile halls.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
This summer, ads linking to a webpage with the name of James Harris appeared online, telling potential clients they could qualify in 30 seconds for up to $1 million. When a Times reporter entered a cell-phone number on one of the ads, a representative who said they worked for the firm’s intake department called dozens of times.
After The Times described these marketing efforts in a story, Harris emphasized in an email that he did not know about the ads or the persistent calls and said they were done by his “referring firm.” The landing page the ads led to was replaced with the name of Sheldon Law Group.
Harris said his firm and Sheldon, which he described as “functioning as a genuine and independent co counsel law firm,” have “been highly selective and have only prosecuted cases that we believe are legally and factually meritorious.”
“I continue to believe that lawyer advertising, when conducted ethically and without misleading claims, serves as a vital tool for raising public awareness about legal rights and available recourse, particularly for survivors of abuse seeking justice,” he said.
Over the last five years, experts say, the practice of funding big mass tort cases has boomed in the U.S.
Of the five main firms in L.A. County’s initial $4-billion sex abuse settlement, two took money from outside investors shortly before they began suing the county, according to public loan filings.
The loans to both Herman Law, a Florida-based firm that specializes in sex abuse cases, and Slater Slater Schuman, a New York-based personal injury firm, came from Delaware-registered companies. Deer Finance, a New York City litigation funding firm that connects investors with lawyers, is listed on business records for both companies.
The loan documents do not specify which of the firms’ cases were funded, but show each deal was finalized within months of the firms starting to sue L.A. County for sex abuse. Neither firm responded to questions about how the outside funding was used.
Slater, which received the loan in spring 2022, represents more L.A. County plaintiffs than any other firm, by far.
Slater’s caseload surged after the county signaled its plan to settle for $4 billion in October 2024. Several of the main attorneys on the case told The Times they stopped advertising at that point, reasoning that any new plaintiffs would now mean less money for the existing ones.
The next month, Slater Slater Schulman ran more than 700 radio ads in Los Angeles seeking juvenile detention abuse claims, according to X Ante, a company that tracks mass tort advertisements.
By this summer, the number of claims jumped from roughly 2,100 to 3,700, according to court records, catapulting Slater far beyond the caseload of any other firm.
This fall, another Delaware-registered company took out a lien on all of Slater’s attorney fees from the county cases, according to an Oct. 6 loan record. The law firm assisting with the transaction declined to comment.
“These are extraordinarily complex cases and litigating these cases effectively requires resources,” said an outside attorney representing Slater in a statement, responding to questions from The Times.
The firm, which also represents roughly 14,000 victims in the Boy Scouts sex abuse cases, was singled out by the judge overseeing the litigation this fall for “procedural and factual problems” among its plaintiffs. The firm was one of several called out by insurers in the litigation for using hedge fund money to “run up the claim number.”
The firm has said they’re working “tirelessly” to address the issues and justice for survivors is its top priority.
April Mannani, who says she was assaulted in the 1990s by an officer while she was housed at MacLaren Children’s Center, said she feels lawyers on the sex abuse cases are putting profits ahead of the best interests of clients.
(Jimena Peck/For The Times)
Many plaintiffs told The Times they were discouraged to see how much money stood to be made for others off their trauma.
April Mannani, 51, sued L.A. County after she said she was raped repeatedly as a teenager at MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter now notorious for abuse. Mannani accepts that her lawyers are entitled to a cut for their work on the case, but said she was disheartened watching the numbers of cases suddenly skyrocket this year. With the district attorney investigating, a pall has been cast over the entire settlement.
“We’ve been made fools of and we were used for financial gain,” she said. “They all just see it as a money grab.”
That firm that represents her, Herman Law, has filed roughly 800 cases against L.A. County. Herman Law took out a loan in 2021 from a Delaware-registered company affiliated with Deer Finance, according to a loan notice. The firm said they use traditional bank loans for “overall operations.”
Herman Law is the most prolific filer of county sex abuse cases outside of L.A. County since the state changed the statute of limitations.
Herman Law has filed about half of these roughly 800 sex abuse lawsuits that have been brought outside of L.A. County, according to data reviewed by The Times.
Herman Law has sued several tiny counties, where public officials say they’ve been inundated with advertisements on social media and TV looking for plaintiffs. Some counties say they threw out relevant records long ago and have no way to tell if the alleged victim was ever in local custody.
A judge fined Herman Law about $9,500 last month for failing to dismiss Kings County from a lawsuit despite presenting no evidence the county ever had custody of the victim, calling the claim “factually frivolous” and “objectively unreasonable.” An attorney for Herman Law said in a court filing the client believed she’d been in a foster home there, and the lack of records didn’t conclusively establish anything.
“There are not records. There’s nothing that exists,” said Jason Britt, the county administrative officer for Tulare County, which has been sued at least eight times by Herman Law. “Counties at some point are not gonna be able to operate because you’re essentially going to bankrupt them.”
The firm said its clients are always its top priority.
“No lender or financial relationship has ever influenced, directed or played any role in legal strategy, client decisions or case outcomes, including any matters involving the Los Angeles County,” the firm said. “Herman Law’s work is driven solely by our mission to advocate for survivors in their pursuit of justice and healing.”
Joseph Nicchitta, L.A. County’s acting chief executive officer, said he believed the region’s social safety net was now “an investment opportunity.” In an October letter to the State Bar, he called out the “explosive growth” of claims, arguing a handful of firms were “competing to bring as many cases as possible” to the detriment of their existing clients.
He estimated that attorney fees in the lawsuit would amount to more than $1 billion. “It begs reform,” he wrote.
Four residents of Pari, a low-lying Indonesian island, filed the complaint in January 2023.
Published On 22 Dec 202522 Dec 2025
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A Swiss court has agreed to hear a legal complaint against cement giant Holcim, accusing the company of failing to do enough to cut carbon emissions.
NGO Swiss Church Aid (HEKS/EPER), which is supporting the complainants, said on Monday that the court had decided to admit the legal complaint. Holcim confirmed the decision and said it plans to appeal.
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The complaint was filed in January 2023 by four residents of Pari, a low-lying Indonesian island that has suffered repeated flooding as rising global temperatures drive up sea levels. The case was submitted to a court in Zug, Switzerland, where Holcim has its headquarters.
According to HEKS, this is the first time a Swiss court has admitted climate litigation brought against a big corporation.
If successful, it would also be the first case seeking to hold a Swiss company legally responsible for its contribution to global warming, the group has previously said.
The lawsuit is also among the first climate cases brought by people in the Global South directly affected by climate change and forms part of a growing push for compensation for “loss and damage”, campaigners backing the case said.
The nongovernmental organisation supporting the plaintiffs said Holcim was selected because it is one of the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitters and the biggest so-called “carbon major” based in Switzerland.
A study commissioned by HEKS and conducted by the United States-based Climate Accountability Institute found that Holcim emitted more than 7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 1950 and 2021 – about 0.42 percent of total global industrial emissions over the period.
Holcim has said it is committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and is following a science-based pathway to meet that goal. The company says it has cut direct CO2 emissions from its operations by more than 50 percent since 2015.
The plaintiffs are seeking compensation for climate-related damage, financial contributions to flood protection measures on Pari Island, and a rapid reduction in Holcim’s carbon emissions.
Cement production accounts for about 7 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Global Cement and Concrete Association.
NEW YORK — At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.
The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Justice Department didn’t answer questions Saturday about why the files disappeared but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”
Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”
The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.
Scant new insight in the disclosures
Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.
Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.
The gaps go further.
The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability.
Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.
The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.
There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.
Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.
That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a years-long battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and alleged crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.
“I feel like again, the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.
Redactions, lack of context
Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.
The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages of records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.
Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.
Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” probably from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.
Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.
The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.
Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.
One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.
Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.
“For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”
The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.
Acosta, who was Labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.
He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.
“I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would probably view the survivors differently.
“There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.
Jennifer Freeman, an attorney representing Epstein accuser Maria Farmer and other survivors, said Saturday that her client feels vindicated after the document release. Farmer sought for years documents backing up her claim that Epstein and Maxwell were in possession of child sexual abuse images.
“It’s a triumph and a tragedy,” she said. “It looks like the government did absolutely nothing. Horrible things have happened and if they investigated in even the smallest way, they could have stopped him.”
Sisak and Caruso write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Kristin M. Hall, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.
Khan and his wife have denied accusations that they misrepresented the value of state gifts, including jewellery, and profited from them.
Published On 20 Dec 202520 Dec 2025
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Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have been sentenced to 17 years in prison after a Pakistani court found them guilty of illegally retaining and selling valuable state gifts.
The sentence, handed down on Saturday, capped a years-long saga that saw the duo accused of selling various gifts – including jewellery from the Saudi Arabian government – at far below market value. They have denied all charges.
In order to keep gifts from foreign dignitaries, Pakistani law requires officials to purchase them at market value and to declare profits from any sales.
But prosecutors claimed that the couple profited from the items after purchasing them at an artificially low price of $10,000, compared with their market rate of $285,521.
Khan’s supporters were quick to denounce the ruling, with his spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari saying that “criminal liability was imposed without proof of intent, gain, or loss, relying instead on a retrospective reinterpretation of rules”.
His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, wrote on social media that the proceedings were a “sham” and criticised international media coverage of the case.
The 73-year-old former leader served as Pakistan’s prime minister from 2018 until April 2022, when he was ousted in a no-confidence vote.
He was imprisoned starting in August 2023 on various charges of corruption and revealing state secrets, all of which he has denied and claimed to be politically motivated. He has been acquitted of some charges.
An internationally famous cricket player in the heyday of his sporting career, Khan remains popular in Pakistan, with his imprisonment leading to protests throughout the last two years.
The former leader is now confined to a prison in the city of Rawalpindi and “kept inside all the time”, his sister, Uzma Khanum, told journalists earlier this month.
Khanum, a doctor who was the first family member allowed to visit Khan in weeks, described him as “very angry” about the isolation, saying that he considered the “mental torture” of imprisonment to be “worse than physical abuse”.
Dec. 19 (UPI) — The Justice Department on Friday released records from the Jeffrey Epstein case in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act signed into law last month by President Donald Trump.
The DOJ has made the files publicly available online on the Justice Department website’s section on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but the names of victims and other identifying information have been redacted. Congress overwhelmingly approved the legislation and it was signed by Trump on Nov. 19 with a 30-day deadline to release files.
“By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement shared with NBC News.
Friday’s files release gives the public access to hundreds of thousands of records, with more to be released over the next several weeks, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a letter to members of Congress, as reported by CBS News.
“We are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim, their name, their identity, their story to the extent it needs to be protected is completely protected,” Blanche added.
The DOJ had 187 attorneys review the documents ahead of their release and 25 more on a quality control team, he said.
“Protecting victims is of the highest priority for President Trump, the Attorney General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice,” Blanche said in the letter.
He also said Trump has said he wants full transparency on the matter and has supported the release of the Epstein case files for several years.
The president signed the supporting legislation in November to expedite the release of the Epstein case files.
The documents include information that was already made public, along with files that are “very likely to have never seen the light of day before,” CNN crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz said.
The records are in addition to the tens of thousands of files already released regarding the federal case against former financier Epstein.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have also released files and photos from Epstein’s estate.
On Aug. 10, 2019, Epstein hung himself while jailed in Manhattan and awaiting a federal trial that accused him of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors.
The release of hundreds of thousands of pages of the case files and other information will keep news outlets busy going through them well into the foreseeable future.
The released files include documents, telephone records, audio recordings and photographs, but many lack context that explains why they are included in the case files.
MILWAUKEE — A jury found a Wisconsin judge accused of helping a Mexican immigrant dodge federal authorities guilty of obstruction Thursday, marking a victory for President Trump as he continues his sweeping immigration crackdown across the country.
Federal prosecutors charged Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan with obstruction, a felony, and concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor, in April. The jury acquitted her on the concealment count, but she still faces up to five years in prison on the obstruction count.
The jury returned the verdicts after deliberating for six hours. Dugan faces up to five years in prison when she’s sentenced, but no date had been set as of late Thursday evening.
The case inflamed tensions over Trump’s immigration crackdown, with his administration branding Dugan an activist judge and Democrats countering that the administration was trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.
Dugan and her attorneys left the courtroom, ducked into a side conference room and closed the door without speaking to reporters. Steve Biskupic, her lead attorney, later told reporters that he was disappointed with the ruling and didn’t understand how the jury could have reached a split verdict since the elements of both charges were virtually the same.
U.S. Atty. Brad Schimel denied the case was political and urged people to accept the verdict peacefully. He said courthouse arrests are safer because people are screened for weapons and it isn’t unfair for law enforcement to arrest wanted people in courthouses.
“Some have sought to make this about a larger political battle,” Schimel said. “While this case is serious for all involved, it is ultimately about a single day, a single bad day, in a public courthouse. The defendant is certainly not evil. Nor is she a martyr for some greater cause.”
U.S. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche praised the verdict on X, saying nobody is above the law, even judges.
According to court filings that include an FBI affidavit and a federal grand jury indictment, immigration authorities traveled to the Milwaukee County courthouse on April 18 after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.
Dugan learned that agents were in the corridor outside her courtroom waiting for Flores-Ruiz. She left the courtroom to confront them, falsely telling them their administrative warrant for Flores-Ruiz wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest him and directing them to go to the chief judge’s office.
While the agents were gone, she addressed Flores-Ruiz’s case off the record, told his attorney that he could attend his next hearing via Zoom and led Flores-Ruiz and the attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.
Prosecutors worked during Dugan’s trial to show that she directed agents to the chief judge’s office to create an opening for Flores-Ruiz to escape.
An FBI agent who led the investigation testified that after agents left the corridor, she immediately moved Flores-Ruiz’s case to the top of her docket, told him that he could appear for his next hearing via Zoom and led him out the private door.
Prosecutors also played audio recordings from her courtroom in which she can be heard telling her court reporter that she’d take “the heat” for leading Flores-Ruiz out the back.
Her attorneys countered that she was trying to follow courthouse protocols that called for court employees to report any immigration agents to their supervisors and she didn’t intentionally try to obstruct the arrest team.
The family of pitcher Tyler Skaggs and the Angels reached a settlement Friday, ending a contentious trial as jurors had begun a third day of deliberations regarding Skaggs’ drug-related death on the road with the team. Terms of the agreement, which followed 31 days of testimony and four years of legal wrangling, were not immediately available.
Jury foreman Richard Chung said after the settlement was announced that the panel had agreed to award Skaggs’ family roughly $100 million when they were told to cease deliberations — $60 million to $80 million for economic damages, $5 million to $15 million for emotional distress damages and $10 million to $20 million for punitive damages.
Rusty Hardin, the Skaggs family’s lead attorney, told The Times that although he could not reveal the amount of the agreement, “the Skaggs family is extremely happy with the settlement.”
Early efforts to settle the case had been unsuccessful, with the Angels’ legal team and its insurance carriers rebuffing overtures from the lawyers representing Tyler Skaggs’ widow Carli Skaggs and parents Debbie Hetman and Darrell Skaggs. As recently as Tuesday evening, after the jury had begun deliberations, the lead attorneys from each side met but gained little traction toward a settlement.
The equation changed Wednesday when jurors asked the judge to read back testimony from experts on Skaggs’ future earnings had he lived. The request suggested that that the jury had determined the Angels were responsible for at least a percentage of economic damages. The jury also asked whether it was charged with determining the amount of punitive damages, adding to speculation that it might hand the Skaggs family an award beyond economic and emotional distress damage.
Roughly 95% of civil suits nationwide reach a settlement ahead of or during trial. Plaintiffs and defendants alike overwhelmingly prefer to eliminate the risk of an all-or-nothing jury verdict by agreeing on a compromise dollar figure.
Attorney Rusty Hardin, center, addresses the media Friday on behalf of the Skaggs family after a settlement was reached in their wrongful death lawsuit against the Angels.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Sources on the Skaggs family legal team said they were amenable to a settlement to eliminate the chance of the jury determining the Angels weren’t responsible for Skaggs’ death and denying any award. Also, while either side could have appealed a jury verdict, the settlement ended the case.
Carli Skaggs and Hetman hugged their lawyers and each other when Judge H. Shaina Colover announced that a settlement had been reached and jurors were excused.
“The Skaggs family has reached a confidential settlement with Angels Baseball that brings to a close a difficult six-year process, allowing our families to focus on healing,” the family said in a statement. “We are deeply grateful to the members of this jury, and to our legal team. Their engagement and focus gave us faith, and now we have finality.
“This trial exposed the truth and we hope Major League Baseball will now do its part in holding the Angels accountable. While nothing can bring Tyler back, we will continue to honor his memory.”
MLB declined to comment on the settlement.
A jury verdict favoring the Angels also would have meant the high-powered Skaggs legal team that has spent thousands of hours on the case wouldn’t have been paid. Their contingency fee — typically at least 40% of an award — would have been zero.
Skaggs died July 1, 2019, during an Angels road trip in Texas after snorting an illicit pain pill that was laced with fentanyl.
The pill was given to Skaggs by Angels communications director Eric Kay, who is serving 22 years in federal prison for his role in the pitcher’s death. Skaggs was discovered in his Southlake, Texas, hotel room the next morning, and an autopsy concluded he accidentally died of asphyxia after aspirating his own vomit.
“The death of Tyler Skaggs remains a tragedy, and this trial sheds light on the dangers of opioid use and the devastating effects it can have,” the Angels said Friday in a statement.
Each juror had to fill out a 26-question verdict form during deliberations. The first batch of questions focused on Kay, asking jurors whether the Angels were negligent in their supervision of him, whether the team knew he was distributing illicit pills and whether he was operating within the scope of his employment when he did so.
Carli Skaggs, Tyler Skaggs’ widow, with attorney Rusty Hardin in court Friday in Santa Ana.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
If jurors answered “yes” to any of those questions, they were then asked whether the Angels’ negligence and Kay’s “unfitness or incompetence” were substantial factors in the death of Skaggs, as well as harm to his iPad.
Consideration of the iPad, which Skaggs used as a surface to chop up drugs, was related solely to punitive damages.
The first damages the jury considered were economic. Experts for the Skaggs family lawyers testified that he would have made an estimated $102 million had he lived and continued to pitch. Experts for the Angels said his earnings wouldn’t have been more than $30 million.
During closing statements, Skaggs family attorney Daniel Dutko suggested that the Angels were 70 to 90 percent responsible for his death, and that Kay and Skaggs could each be assigned about 10 percent of the blame. Angels attorney Todd Theodora did not suggest a specific percentage, but conceded the jury might find Kay partially responsible for Skaggs’ death.
Also during closing statements, Dutko and Theodora each walked the jury through the nine-page verdict form, suggesting how questions should be answered based on testimony that supported their arguments. While criminal cases require a burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, civil cases require only a preponderance of the evidence. At least nine of the 12 jurors are required to agree on a verdict.
Dutko said the Angels for years were negligent in dealing with Kay, a team employee since 1996 whose illicit opioid use became apparent as early as 2009, according to testimony. Evidence showed the Angels concealed Kay’s addiction rather than follow team and Major League Baseball policies in reporting it and punishing Kay, Dutko told the jury.
“Is that reasonable, is that how we want companies in our country to run?” Dutko said. “They didn’t monitor anything. They didn’t do anything.”
“There is no doubt that if Eric Kay wasn’t employed by the Angels, if he wasn’t in that clubhouse, Tyler Skaggs would be alive.”
Kay entered outpatient rehab for substance abuse in the spring of 2019 and returned to work just weeks before he was sent with the Angels to Texas. Skaggs quickly texted Kay asking for oxycodone pills. Theodora argued that the messages showed Skaggs was an uncontrollable addict who had little regard for Kay’s well-being.
Theodora showed the jury a pyramid-shaped graphic with Skaggs at the top and players who evidence had shown were given opioids by Skaggs under him, and argued that Skaggs was as complicit in distributing the drugs as Kay.
The Angels attorney told the jury that the plaintiffs’ stance that Kay should have been fired applied to Skaggs as well. “What you see here is a classic double standard,” Theodora said.
Dutko delivered a rebuttal to Theodora’s closing statement, returning to the theme that the Angels never took any responsibility for Skaggs’ death and told jurors that they can make that clear by reaching a verdict in favor of his wife and parents.
“The only reason Tyler Skaggs is dead is the Angels,” Dutko said. “We have fought for Tyler Skaggs and I will continue to fight for Tyler Skaggs as long as I’m alive. I need you to fight for him, please.”
The jury was close to a verdict that would have favored Skaggs’ family. Chung said the panel was discussing apportionment of responsibility and would have been done by the noon lunch break had they not been told to cease deliberations around 9:30 a.m.
He said his own determination was that the Angels bore 50% of the responsibility for Skaggs’ death while Kay was responsible for 35% and Skaggs for 15%.
“Ultimately, we felt the Angels needed to know that they were at fault,” Chung said. “Just to say, ‘Do better.’ They needed to do better.”
