Harvey Silberman
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge

The Court of Appeal for this district, on March 2, summarily denied a petition by Silberman, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge since January of last year, for a writ of mandate or prohibition requiring the trial court to dismiss a felony indictment for solicitation to induce a candidate not to run for public office. On March 15, Silberman petitioned the state Supreme Court to review the denial.

Silberman and two campaign consultants are accused of offering monetary inducements to Deputy District Attorney Serena Murillo, whom Silberman—then a Superior Court commissioner—defeated in the June 2008 primary, to withdraw from the contest for that seat. Orange Superior Court Judge Richard M. King, who is hearing the case as an assigned Los Angeles Superior Court judge, earlier dismissed charges against the three defendants of soliciting bribes, but denied their motions to throw out the election-law charges..

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, faces pretrial conference April 7 on five felony embezzlement counts. The conference before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Bob Bowers Jr. was continued from March 10.

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 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, whose efforts to free himself from coercive imprisonment for contempt of court have been rebuffed at just about every level of the state and federal courts, has now turned to the judge who sent him to jail in the first place.

The 70-year-old onetime antitrust lawyer, on March 25, filed a “Demand for an Immediate Farr hearing.” The reference is to In Re Farr (1974) 36 Cal.App.3d 577, which held that a coercive contempt commitment for disobeying a court order becomes punitive, and thus subject to a five-day limit, “where disobedience of the order is based upon an established articulated moral principle” and there is no “substantial likelihood that continued commitment will accomplish the purpose of the order upon which the commitment is based.”

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. 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.

The judgment debtor exam is part of an effort to collect sanctions imposed on Fine by Yaffe in the case of Marina Strand Colony II Homeowners Assn vs. County of Los Angeles, BS109420. Fine argued Yaffe should have disqualified himself from the outset of the case because he, like apparently every other Los Angeles Superior Court judge, has received benefits from the county over and above his state salary.

Yaffe said the argument, whether meritorious or not, was waived because Fine was aware of the payments at least 10 months before he raised the issue.

Fine returned to the trial court earlier this year in his efforts to seek release, having been turned down by every other court whose jurisdiction he sought to invoke, including the U.S. Supreme Court. In his latest filing, he cites a complaint filed by a supporter with the United Nations, claiming that Fine’s continued imprisonment constitutes torture.

Mitchell Roth
Former Superior Court Candidate

Roth, a candidate for the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2004, has filed for personal bankruptcy, stalling a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Jerry Brown July 6 of last year. 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 last April 23. Roth tendered his resignation from the State Bar on May 29 of last year rather than face disciplinary charges.

Walter Karabian
Attorney and Former Legislator

Karabian, 72, faces an April 23 pretrial conference in connection with a misdemeanor charge of assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly hitting a parking attendant with his car during a USC football game last year.

Karabian allegedly tried to drive his car into a parking structure at Exposition Park at around noon on Dec. 5 but was stopped by an attendant who told him he did not have the proper permit.

After being refused entry, he allegedly drove his car forward, striking the parking attendant—identified in the complaint as Yventte Bueno—several times.

The woman was not seriously injured but was taken to the hospital. The case is being handled by the district attorney because the ex-lawmaker’s son, Benjamin Karabian, is a deputy city attorney.

The elder Karabian is a former deputy district attorney and was elected to the state Assembly from a Monterey Park district at the age of 28 in 1966. He became the youngest majority leader in the Assembly’s history at the age of 33, and served four terms before leaving politics in 1974 after a failed run for secretary of state..