"They just folded," Forchion says.
Trutanich has a slightly better record of fighting medical marijuana in civil court, if only because most dispensaries have simply closed when threatened with litigation. But in the only civil case yet to reach a jury, against Buds on Melrose, Trutanich lost. The dispensary is still open for business.
PHOTO BY NANETTE GONZALES
Trutanich has slapped 50 Occupy L.A. protesters with criminal charges.
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Trutanich now is trying to get the City Council to ban medical marijuana completely.
"He's smart enough to see it as a problem but not smart enough to regulate around it," says the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance's Sarah Armstrong.
For now, the legal environment around medical marijuana is messier than ever (see our Feb. 18 cover story, "L.A.'s Pot Prohibition Playbook," by Hillel Aron).
District Attorney Steve Cooley, who has had more luck than Trutanich prosecuting dispensaries under state law, continues to pursue criminal cases. Enforcement seems to be at the whim of individual City Council members and LAPD captains. Meanwhile, dispensaries open every week in defiance of the city's ordinance.
Trutanich has complained about the scores of suits that have been filed against the city, but marijuana activists blame Trutanich for failing to work with the industry. In the meantime, Trutanich's confrontational approach has eaten up resources that could have been spent on other things. Last year, Trutanich told the Sherman Oaks Patch that 20 deputy city attorneys are working on marijuana cases.
Even some within the office openly question whether that's a wise use of attorneys' time.
"Staffing has gotten very thin," says Phil Sugar, a veteran in the City Attorney's Office. "Putting marijuana at the top priority is probably not energy well spent."
Trutanich assigned as many as 18 lawyers — in both his criminal and civil divisions — to go after illegal billboards and supergraphics, which had sprouted up all over the city in the previous decade. The criminal attorneys were unusually aggressive. Instead of mailing notices, they sought arrest warrants. In one infamous case, they locked up a building owner, Kayvan Setareh, on $1 million bail.
"If they commit a violation of the law for a monetary motive, they should be subjected to jail time like everybody else," says Bill Carter, Trutanich's chief deputy. "The purpose of jail sentences is for deterrence."
But in court, the supergraphics industry has fought Trutanich to a standstill. The City Attorney's Office has filed 52 criminal cases against property owners, sign installers and billboard executives. To date, none of them has been sentenced to jail. Despite extraordinary efforts from Trutanich's office, only three people have pleaded guilty to sign-ordinance violations; all of them got probation. (Another five corporate entities also entered pleas.) Most of the cases — 38 — are still pending.
One of those is the case against Setareh, who had rented out the side of a building he owns in Hollywood to a supergraphics company, which hung a large advertisement for the movie How to Train Your Dragon. His attorney, Andrew Stein, says Setareh was unaware there was a problem until a team of officers stormed his home in the Pacific Palisades and hauled him off to jail — where he was held on $1 million bail.
In a statement, Trutanich warned, "The days of lax and inconsistent enforcement of billboard and outdoor advertising laws in this city are over."
It was great political theater. But as a legal matter, Trutanich had overstepped. There are only a few legal justifications for setting bail — for example, if a defendant is a flight risk. "Sending a message" isn't one of them.
Trutanich's legal argument rested entirely on the notion that the signs posed a threat to public safety: that they were fire hazards, and that they could fall to the ground and kill pedestrians. Never mind that the city had signed off on permits for supergraphics just like Setareh's at other locations, including Staples Center.
Stuck in jail, Setareh was in no position to argue. As a condition of his release, he agreed to have the sign taken down.
Several months later, other supergraphics defendants did argue the point, and won. After a seven-day bail hearing, Judge Greg Dohi refused to order that the signs be taken down and set bail at just $10,000.
"The bottom line is that the people have failed to show that the risks associated with flammability, fire spread and smoke rise to the level of imminent danger," Dohi ruled.
Setareh had spent three days in jail on a false premise.
"This case has left a terrible taste in my mouth about how justice is dispensed in that office," says Stein, Setareh's attorney. "It's political now." He calls Trutanich "a bully." Setareh's trial is set for next month, and he faces a fine at most, Stein says.
Trutanich has had victories. Thanks to an appellate ruling in the city's favor in 2010, most of the illegal signs have been taken down. And last year, CBS Outdoor agreed to a $4 million settlement in a supergraphics case. But he can just as easily overplay his hand.
Trutanich has been trying to extract millions of dollars in civil penalties from Mark Denny and his co-defendants, including Barry Rush, owner of Worldwide Mediacom. Last year, Denny's attorney made a settlement offer of about $40,000. Trutanich rejected it as far too low.
