Richard A. Windom
Attorney

Widom, until recently a name partner at the workers’ compensation firm now known as Stockwell Harris Wool­verton Muehl, was charged with misdemeanor spousal battery in November of last year over an incident alleged to have occurred on March 1. The alleged victim is his wife Lisa Kerner, a vice president of the law firm.

Widom was terminated by the law firm and entered solo practice, a source said. The City Attorney’s Office’s Family Violence Unit brought the misdemeanor charge after deputy district attorneys rejected the case for felony prosecution..

Harvey Silberman
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge

Orange Superior Court Judge Richard M. King earlier this month dismissed charges that Silberman and two political consultants solicited bribes, but declined to throw out related charges of solicitation to induce a candidate not to run for public office. The charges stem from the 2008 contest in which Silberman defeated Deputy District Attorney Serena Murillo for an open seat on the court.

Lori Ann Jones
Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner

Jones, a court commissioner since March 2006, was placed on paid administrative leave Sept. 18 of last year following the release of grand jury transcripts in which she testified to having conveyed to then-judicial candidate Serena Murillo a suggestion that funds would be available to pay Murillo’s filing fee in the event she were willing to seek election to a judicial office other than that sought by then-Commissioner Harvey Silberman. Jones said she made the call as an accommodation to Evelyn Jerome Alexander, a campaign consultant who was representing Silberman at the time and who later represented Jones.

Mervyn H. Wolf
Encino Attorney

Wolf, a lawyer for 40 years, is scheduled to have a pretrial conference March 10 on five felony embezzlement counts. The case had been scheduled for trial Jan. 27 before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Bob Bowers Jr., but was continued.

Wolf is accused of having taken settlement funds from his clients in multiple personal injury, workers’ compensation, and wrongful termination cases between June 2003 and June 2004. He allegedly deposited settlement checks into his clients’ trust accounts, and then embezzled the funds.

Wolf was placed on involuntary inactive status by the State Bar Court on July 10, 2006 and faces 23 disciplinary charges, including failure to deposit funds into a trust account; receiving an illegal fee; charging an unconscionable fee; failure to account for client funds; failure to release a client’s file; failure to pay client funds promptly; failure to account for client funds; conversion of funds sent to him by mistake; and multiple counts of failure to maintain funds in a trust account, misappropriation of client funds, and failure to cooperate in State Bar investigations.

Richard I. Fine
Disbarred Attorney

Fine last month sought emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court after the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, on Nov. 24, denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging his coercive imprisonment for civil contempt.

Fine has been confined to the Twin Towers jail since being held in contempt March 4 of last year by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Yaffe. His federal habeas corpus petition challenging that confinement was denied by U.S. District Judge John Walter of the Central District of California on June 29.

Yaffe ordered Fine jailed for as long as he refuses to respond to questions asked at a judgment debtor examination, and jailed for five days for holding himself out as entitled to practice law after being placed on involuntary inactive status by the State Bar Court.

Fine contends that he was denied due process and a jury trial when he was jailed. He also claims to be the victim of a vendetta by Los Angeles Superior Court judicial officers based on his litigation of suits in which he challenged Los Angeles County’s payment of benefits to Superior Court judges.

Those benefits were declared unconstitutional—as not being authorized by the Legislature—by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in 2008 in a suit brought by the advocacy group Judicial Watch, but the governor in February signed into law a bill that allows counties to continue paying benefits to supplement the salaries of Superior Court judges and immunizing officials against any liability for having unlawfully paid such benefits in the past. A visiting judge, assigned to the Los Angeles Superior Court, upheld the new law in August.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 5 denied Fine’s petition for a writ of certiorari seeking review of his disbarment by the state Supreme Court.

Fine, a lawyer for 35 years, asked the nation’s highest court to overturn the lifting of his license as a violation of his rights to free speech and due process. The state high court declined to review a State Bar Court ruling that Fine engaged in moral turpitude by continuously relitigating issues on which he had been ruled against.

State Bar Court Hearing Judge Richard Honn found in November 2007 that the lawyer engaged in a concerted campaign of litigation designed to harass judicial officers who had found against him, in particular Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Bruce Mitchell.

Roosevelt Dorn
Former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge

Dorn, who served on the Inglewood Municipal Court and the Los Angeles Superior Court from 1979 until his election as mayor of Inglewood in 1997, pled guilty Monday to one misdemeanor count of conflict of interest. Felony charges of misappropriation of public funds were dismissed as part of a plea bargain, one day after Dorn resigned as Inglewood mayor.

Dorn admitted that he personally benefited from a loan program designed to assist city employees in purchasing and improving housing within the city. As a result of the conviction, he will be barred from ever holding public office in California again.

Mitchell Roth
Former Superior Court Candidate

Roth, a candidate for the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2004, filed for personal bankruptcy, stalling a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Jerry Brown on July 6. The attorney general charged Roth and foreclosure consultant Paul Noe Jr. with having defrauded some 2,000 desperate homeowners into paying exorbitant fees for “phony lawsuits” to forestall foreclosure proceedings.

Noe did not answer the complaint, and a spokesman for Brown said a default judgment was being sought.

The complaint alleges that the suits were filed and abandoned, even though homeowners were charged $1,800 in upfront fees, at least $1,200 per month, and contingency fees of up to 80 percent of a home’s value.

The Los Angeles Superior Court assumed jurisdiction over Roth’s law practice in February, allowing the State Bar to take control of his Sherman Oaks, San Diego and Riverside law offices. The State Bar said Roth had been hospitalized due to severe depression, leaving several clients in foreclosure defense litigation cases subject to losing their homes and facing eviction.

Roth did not contest the takeover of his practice or the State Bar’s subsequent motion to place him on involuntary inactive status, which was granted by State Bar Court Judge Richard Honn on April 23. Roth tendered his resignation from the State Bar on May 29 rather than face disciplinary charges.

LaJetta Y. Wright
Long Beach Attorney

Wright, a former treasurer of the Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, faces sentencing Tuesday after pleading guilty July 29 to charges she embezzled $26,000 from the group in 2004. The sentencing was continued from Dec. 2.

Walter Loustari
La Canada Attorney

Loustari, a 58-year-old Glendale resident, faces sentencing March 3 after pleading no contest Jan. 22 to felony charges of possessing child pornography and an assault rifle.

Prosecutors said Loustari, who faces a maximum of three years and eight months in prison after entering the “open”—non-negotiated—plea, was charged after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with the Glendale Police Department, investigated him as part of Operation Predator, in which ICE works with local agencies to investigate child pornography throughout the United States.