A veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor has reached a settlement “in principle” in her lawsuit against the state of California in which she alleges her home address, birthdate and other private information was temporarily made public in 2022 on an Attorney General’s Office website listing holders of permits authorizing them to carry concealed weapons.
Deputy District Attorney Michele Hanisee’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges privacy violations and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She seeks unspecified compensatory damages as well as punitive damages where allowed by law.
On Tuesday, Judge Upinder S. Kalra signed an order rescheduling Wednesday’s scheduled trial-setting conference to Nov. 6 so that the two sides can continue working on the accord.
“The parties are currently in the process of finalizing a settlement agreement and securing formal approval through the state of California,” the attorneys stated in joint papers filed on Monday with the judge.
In their previous court papers, defense attorneys denied Hanisee’s allegations and cited multiple defenses, including immunity and that any damages the plaintiff suffered were attributable to the actions of third parties.
In her 25-year career as a crime fighter, Hanisee has prosecuted dozens of murderers, countless members of violent street gangs and criminal syndicates and other felons with no regard for human life or civil society, the suit states.
Hanisee has a permit to carry a concealed firearm to protect herself, as do many judges, law enforcement officers, correctional officers and other crime fighters, the suit states. The privacy she expects in order to protect herself from intimidation, retribution and violence by the very people she prosecutes or by their criminal associate was undermined last summer when Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office published a web portal that for about 12 hours over the course of June 27 and 28, 2022, made the home addresses and birth dates of Hanisee and other permit holders available to the public, the suit states.
“As a result of a political stunt by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, plaintiff’s and thousands of other crime fighters’ personally identifying information … was publicly released … ” according to the suit brought in April 2023 and amended two months later.
The Attorney General’s Office falsely tried to portray the inappropriate release of the information as a “breach,” the suit states.
“Despite the Orwellian attempt to characterize the Department of Justice’s intentional publication of the information as a `breach,’ it was patent that the Department of Justice twice intentionally took the web portal live and published the information,” the suit states. “Thus, far from being a hack or breach of the Department of Justice’s servers as they attempted to characterize it, the publication of the permit holders’ personal information, and the functionality allowing members of the public to download or access that information, was a deliberate act by the Department of Justice.”
An outside law firm hired to conduct an investigation into the alleged breach found that it was done intentionally by unnamed department employees or contractors, but no steps were outlined as to how Hanisee and others affected would be protected in the future, the suit states.
“Notwithstanding the political motivations behind the Attorney General’s publication of the web portal, (Hanisee) did expect that once he understood that his decision to publish the portal had endangered the safety of thousands of public servants like her, Bonta would take swift action to protect them,” the suit states. “He shockingly has not.”
Good for Michelle. You are an amazing prosecutor. Deserving of so much better from the state’s AG.