A judge who previously upheld an $8.1 million jury award for a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who said he suffered harassment and retaliation for questioning the accuracy of his trainers’ written reports granted the deputy nearly $215,000 in attorneys’ fees Friday.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Susan Bryant-Deason said she was taking into account the “exceptional” verdict in Deputy Andrew Rodriguez’s case in awarding him $214,800. She also said the number of hours his lawyers said they spent on the case was reasonable.
The judge denied a second plaintiff’s motion that asked her to refer six LASD employees to who testified in the case to the District Attorney’s Office for inclusion on its “Brady list,” a compilation of law enforcement officers considered untrustworthy as witnesses. She said there was no legal authority given to support the request.
Lawyers for the county, who opposed the “Brady list” referral, also maintained that the amount of attorneys’ fees requested was excessive.
Mira Hashmall, one of the county’s attorneys, told the judge the verdict is on appeal. In February, Hashmall argued for a new trial or a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, maintaining that the jury was not properly instructed before rendering its Oct. 4 verdict in favor of the 37-year-old Rodriguez.
Hashmall said the lack of evidence at trial supporting Rodriguez’s claims for hostile work environment and retaliation was exacerbated when the jury instructions and verdict form both failed to delineate what protected status the deputy had and what protected conduct he engaged in.
But the judge disagreed, saying there was “substantial evidence to support the verdict.” She also said she did not believe the jury was confused or that the damage award was excessive.
Rodriguez, who filed his lawsuit in October 2017, was assigned as a trainee at the Industry station in December 2013 after earlier stints in the county jails and as a bailiff in Compton Superior Court and the Edelman Children’s Court in Monterey Park.
Rodriguez testified that his first two trainers at the Industry station, Joanne Arcos and Timmy Nakamura, engaged in what he believed were unconstitutional stops and detentions of potential suspects that could have led to both him and the trainers going to federal prison.
Rodriguez testified that Arcos told him to falsely state in a report that a methamphetamine pipe found after a suspect’s SUV was stopped was recovered from the motorist’s clothing when it was actually found in the vehicle’s console.
Rodriguez said that when he asked Arcos for her legal justification in stopping the motorist, she refused to answer. He said he also saw her make questionable searches of trunks of vehicles during traffic stops that appeared to conflict with the legal grounds to do so that he had learned at the sheriff’s academy.
Current Undersheriff Timothy Murakami was a captain and the head of the Industry station when Rodriguez was a trainee there.