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Ted Rall v. LA Times et al. – Lawsuit Update

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Ted Rall

Remember this the next time someone tells you it’s too easy to file a lawsuit in American courts. We need tort reform, but not to make it harder. It needs to become easier to seek justice!

As I wrote earlier, a judge in LA Superior Court ruled against me in the first round of anti-SLAPP motions filed against me by the LA Times. The Times is deploying anti-SLAPP — a law promoted as a way to protect whistleblowers and critics against wealthy corporations — against me because I am suing them for defamation and wrongful termination. (This was after they falsely claimed I had lied about being roughed up by an LAPD police officer in the course of a jaywalking arrest, and continued to lie after I used their own evidence to prove it. The Times and its publisher had a close financial and political relationship with the LAPD, which I had repeatedly criticized in my cartoons.)

On November 20 the ethics-impaired LA Times — terrified that my case might someday be heard before a jury of my peers — continued its scorched-earth litigation tactics and asked a judge to issue a judgement against me for about $350,000 of the Times’ legal fees. The fees included Times lawyer Kelli Sager’s $705/hour fee, which she described as “discounted.” It also included fees for preparing the anti-SLAPP motions themselves, which violated court rules by running 27+ pages instead of the allowed 15, and a previous judge threw out of court.

The Times also requested that I be forced to post an “appeals bond” equal to 1.5 times the value of the award, thus amounting to about $525,000. That bond would have to be posted in cash; in other words, I would need to send a bonding company 100% ($525,000) to post the bond in order to continue my case.

Remember: the Times is the defendant! They wronged me, not the other way around.

The judge ruled in the Times’ favor.

Corporate media takes care of its own, so I do not expect much solidarity from my fellow inked-stained wretches.

Rall v. LA Times: Now They Want Me To Pay Them $340,000

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Ted Rall

Hi, hope you’re enjoying the fall weather!
Here’s the latest on Rall v. LA Times.
As you may recall, the Times won their anti-SLAPP motion against me in LA Superior Court, and we are appealing that to the Court of Appeals.
We’re optimistic, but in the meantime the Times has filed their attorneys’ fees with the Court and is demanding that I pay them $340,000. That’s right — the LA Times defamed me, and now they’re abusing the law to try to bankrupt me!
There’s a court hearing about the Times’ insane legal bills on November 20; if you’d like to attend please let me know.
Among the highlights:
Times lawyer Kelli Sager charges $705 an hour to defend them against the people they libel, instead of simply publishing a retraction and an apology for their lies. No wonder newspapers are in financial trouble!
One of the defendant corporate entities, Tribune Media, ceased to relate to newspapers in a complicated restructuring that my previous lawyer didn’t know about. Sager was supposed to tell my former lawyer; that’s standard legal ethics. She didn’t. Yet she is billing more than $30,000 just defending that defendant…when she could simply have told my lawyer for the cost of a phone call.
If the Times wins on November 20th, they will likely go after the $75,000 bond posted in 2016 as a result of a previous court order. If that happens and I prevail at appeal, we’ll get it back.
Thank you for your support and, if you’ve been following the fight between Disney and the LA Times, remember: the LA Times are not First Amendment heroes.

Lawsuit Update

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Ted Rall

It has been a while since I filled you in on what’s going on with my lawsuit, so if you’ve been wondering, here’s what’s what.

The original judge in my case, Teresa Sanchez-Gordon, retired. That was a bummer for me because she seemed to understand the case and its importance, and for the most part, she ruled in my favor. LA Superior Court handed the LA Times’ anti-SLAPP motion against me over to a temporary substitute judge, a retired gentleman brought back for a few months in order to help the court dig out of its formidable backlog. Judge Joseph Kalin informed us that he had over 500 cases on his docket. He also said that he had read all of the documents in my case over the previous week. Considering that they are over a foot high and amount to thousands of pages, call me skeptical. No human being could possibly handle all that work.

Adding to the challenge was getting sabotaged by my own lawyers. Rather than send a seasoned litigator to argue the crucial anti-SLAPP hearings (of which three were scheduled), Shegerian & Associates sent a junior associate just a few of years out of law school to argue against Times attorney Kelli Sager, a veteran litigator with decades of experience at a major white-shoe law firm that represents giant corporations trying to crush workers. She was timid, unprepared and failed to fight back when Sager said things that simply weren’t true. Unsurprisingly, the judge ruled against me.

With two more hearings to go, I asked the firm to send out the litigator that we had agreed upon. Carney Shegerian responded with a Notice of Termination. That’s right: my own lawyer fired me! It’s not because I was rude or anything like that. I wasn’t. I don’t know why he did it but I do know that other lawyers tell me that this kind of behavior, dumping a client right before a crucial hearing, is highly unethical.

I managed to find a new attorney in time for the next hearing, but Judge Kalin refused to grant me a continuance to allow my new lawyer time to familiarize himself with my case, and forced me to do my own oral argument. Naturally, the Times lawyer didn’t grant me the basic courtesy of a continuance. All along, they have been playing by scorched-earth tactics.

OK, so I did better than the junior litigator: the judge acknowledged that I had told the truth about my jaywalking arrest in 2001. Which means that the Times never should have written those two articles libeling me and that they should have retracted them and that they should have hired me back immediately. Instead, Judge Kalin ruled that, as a newspaper, the First Amendment gives the Times the right to publish anything, even lies, because of the anti-SLAPP law. Strike two.

Now we go to the Court of Appeals, where we will ask the Court to reverse Judge Kalin’s ruling.

I have a sharp new legal team for the appeal: appellate attorney Jeff Lewis and trial lawyer Roger Lowenstein. We’ve been strategizing and I feel we have a strong case base on the both the content and the spirit of the law, not to mention precedent.

We are drafting our appellate brief, which for anti-SLAPP the court considers de novo, or without consideration for the lower-court ruling. Then the Times gets to respond. Then the court sets a hearing date. Best guess right now is that the appeal will be heard in mid-2018.

If we prevail at that stage, then the case really begins: discovery, subpoenas, depositions of Times employees, etc. If we lose, that’s it. And I’ll owe the Times hundreds of thousands of dollars in THEIR legal fees. Anti-SLAPP is brutal and desperately needs reform to stop these megacorporations from abusing it to crush individual plaintiffs.

In the meantime, I will be incurring substantial costs related to the case, so if you feel inclined to support my fight against the collusion between the LA Times and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, you can help out at http://gofundme.com/tedrall.

LA Times Wins First Round of Anti-SLAPPs; Now On to the Appeal

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Ted Rall

When I filed suit to defend myself against repeated acts of libel by the LA Times and its parent company Tronc, I knew it was the beginning of a long, grueling and risky legal war against a wealthy corporation. Because they libeled me, and did so for sleazy LAPD chief Charlie Beck as part of a corrupt backroom deal, it was the right thing to do — so I did it.

Now I am at risk of losing everything I own. Still, I am fighting on.

Anti-SLAPP: Shortly after I sued in 2016, Times attorney Kelli Sager filed three “anti-SLAPP” motions against me in LA Superior Court. (Anti-SLAPP laws were written to protect individuals against big companies like the Times, but are in practice are often abused by corporations to quash critics and whistleblowers.)

My case can’t start until I get past anti-SLAPP. There is no discovery (the ability to subpoena documents and depose witnesses). If the Times wins anti-SLAPP my case is dismissed and the court will order me to pay their attorneys fees. The Times says those fees will be $300,000. They know I can’t afford that. That’s why they’re doing it–to try to ruin me and send a message to anyone else they decide to attack: fight back against us, and we will destroy you.

Fuck that.

The original judge in my case had ruled against the Times’ repeated motions to dismiss my case. In other words, she thought I had a case. But then she retired — months before the anti-SLAPP hearings, and before a new judge was assigned my case.

The first hearing, with oral arguments, was June 21, 2017. (This was only for the individual defendants: publisher Austin Beutner, reporter Paul Pringle, editorial page editor Nick Goldberg and readers rep Deirdre Edgar.) My lawyer, Carney Shegerian of Shegerian and Associates, inexplicably sent a young junior associate to go up against Sager, a senior partner at a huge anti-worker law firm with decades of experience. As I watched in disbelief, Sager wiped the floor with my lawyer.

Judge Joseph Kalin, in his 80s, was unfamiliar with my case. Kalin was a substitute judge brought back from retirement temporarily because the court was short-handed. Also, he is known for his pro-defense bias (I am the plaintiff.) To my knowledge, he has never ruled against an anti-SLAPP motion.

Kalin ruled against me from the bench. It was a disaster. Next week was the main event: the defendants LA Times and Tronc. So I asked Shegerian for a meeting to strategize, and suggested that a seasoned litigator was called for. Shegerian responded by emailing me a Notice of Termination.

In case you’re wondering: yes, it’s illegal for a lawyer to abandon his client days before a crucial hearing. Anyone considering retaining him should think twice lest they too be left in a lurch. Also, you might wonder if I was rude or intemperate in my communications. Never, ever. Trusted friends who are always honest with me — those are the only friends to have — read the emails and were shocked at how polite I was and how he reacted. This includes lawyers.

Self-Represented: Fired by my lawyer, I asked Kalin for time (a continuance) to find new counsel. Kalin gave me two weeks in all, but that’s not nearly enough time, especially during the summer and over a four-day holiday weekend. On July 14, 2017, he forced me to argue my own case against the Times and Tronc. You can read the transcript of that hearing here.

Adding to the absurdity, I actually found a lawyer, Roger Lowenstein, the day before July 14! Yet Kalin refused to grant me the courtesy of a continuance so Roger could read all the papers and prepare his own argument. (Lawyers across the country expressed disbelief that I wasn’t allowed this delay, but that’s what happened.)

Several weeks later, Kalin ruled against me on Tribune Interactive, another defendant. Why did he take so long the second time? Was it because my oral arguments gave him more to think about?

The Ruling: Times attorney Sager will read this (hi!) so can’t get into detail about what Kalin said in his ruling, but it’s a public record and I’ll send it to anyone interested. Suffice it to say that the judge got some important things wrong about both the facts of the case and the law. My favorite part was that Kalin actually forgot to rule on the Times and Tronc! You know, the primary defendants. He expressed surprise at a later hearing that he hadn’t included the main defendants, and then quickly added them.

Appeal: Anti-SLAPP rulings are automatically appealable to the California Court of Appeals, so whoever lost this round was going to appeal no matter what. My side has already filed the official notice of appeal with the court, so that process is beginning now. Under the statute, the appeals court looks at the matter de novo, in other words, with fresh eyes. They don’t consider the ruling of the lower court. The Court of Appeals is a three-judge panel.

If the Court of Appeals agrees that I have enough of a case to survive the anti-SLAPP statute, then discovery begins and the case begins in earnest. It’s hard to say exactly how long it will take to get before the court of appeals, but a rough estimate tells me the last half of 2018 seems about right.

In the event that the LA Times prevails, then I will have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to them, my case disappears, and the practice of libel and defamation law in the state of California will be even more degraded than it already has been. More importantly, the newspaper’s management will continue to operate with impunity, deploying a slash and burn approach to going after their enemies, covering for the LAPD, and operating with reckless disregard for the truth.

If you are interested in supporting my work, you can contribute to my Patreon. If you want to simply support my case with a financial contribution, you can contribute to my GoFundMe. Expenses for this case will be considerable, including but not limited to court filing fees, preparation and printing of documents, travel between my home in New York and the courthouse in Los Angeles, etc.

Money aside, I especially appreciate anyone who helps spread the word about my struggle on social media, through their website, via their contacts in the media, and so on. I am available to speak about it in public if you’d like to invite me to your city to do so.

If they get away with what they did to me, they can do it to anyone else. And they will.

Rall v. LA Times: Read the Complete Transcript of Ted Rall Arguing Pro Se vs. the LA Times’ Top Litigator

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Ted Rall

As promised, I am making available here the complete hearing transcript of the July 14th hearing in which I was forced to represent myself pro se because the LA Times refused to give my new lawyer a continuance/delay so he could familiarize myself with my case.

Quick recap: I was the LA Times’ editorial cartoonist from 2009 to 2015. I drew lots of comics criticizing the police and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck. Having had enough of me and my cartoons, Beck asked the new publisher, a political ally, to fire me. The Times complied. They used a mostly-blank audio recording to say it didn’t back up one of my blogs, and published two articles characterizing me as a liar. A cleaned-up version of the audio showed I’d told the truth. The Times refused to retract or hire me back, so I sued.

The July 14th hearing was for a pair of anti-SLAPP motions filed by the Times in an attempt to get my case dismissed as frivolous and force me to pay their attorney’s fees. I was between lawyers — my previous firm had dumped me and my new ones were just coming on board — but Times litigator Kelli Sager refused a delay. So I did the oral arguments myself.

I was terrified. Read on:

Ted Rall v. Los Angeles Times (anti-SLAPP hearing), 7/14/17 by Ted Rall on Scribd

There were three anti-SLAPP motions in all. On June 21st my esrtwhile lawyer borked oral arguments on the individual defendants so badly the judge ruled against me from the bench right there and then. July 14th was the main event: motion #2 for the LA Times/Tronc and motion #3 for Tribune Media.

At this writing the court has not issued its ruling on #2 or #3.

What do you think?

How would you rule if you were the judge?

SYNDICATED COLUMN: What Happened When I Represented Myself as My Own Lawyer

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Ted Rall

Image result for attorney pro se

For a cartoonist, I turned out to be a fairly decent lawyer. But I didn’t want to represent myself. It took two vicious lawyers to force me into that position.

One of those lawyers was mine.

I’m suing the Times because they repeatedly, knowingly and intentionally defamed me after firing me as a favor to LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, a thin-skinned pol I’d criticized in my editorial cartoons. The paper responded by turning California’s “anti-SLAPP” law, designed to protect people like me against corporations like the Times and its parent company Tronc, on its head; this $400 million corporation is accusing me — a five-figure income cartoonist — of oppressing its First Amendment rights by using my vast wealth to intimidate them.

Before my case is allowed to begin in earnest, anti-SLAPP requires a plaintiff (me) to convince a judge that, if everything I allege in my lawsuit turns out to be true, I’d likely win before a trial jury. But anti-SLAPP is as confusing as French grammar, so many judges interpret the law much more harshly than it’s actually written.

All the lawyers I talked to told me that I’d almost certainly win at trial if my case survived anti-SLAPP and made it to a jury. Ironically, getting past anti-SLAPP would be our toughest challenge.

The lawyer who took my case agreed with this assessment. But when oral arguments for the first of the Times’ three anti-SLAPPs against me took place on June 21st in LA Superior Court, his firm inexplicably assigned a junior associate, Class of 2013, to take on Kelli Sager.

Kelli Sager, who represents the Times, is a high-powered attorney with more than three decades of courtroom experience, a senior partner at Davis Tremaine Wright, an international law firm that represents giant corporations.

I liked my junior associate. She’s smart and may someday become a great lawyer. But she was no match for a shark like Kelli Sager. Sager talked over her. My lawyer let Sager get away with one brazen lie after another, either too unprepared or timid to respond. She couldn’t even answer the judge’s simple question to walk him through what happened to prompt my lawsuit.

It was a rout. Sager was eloquent and aggressive. My lawyer couldn’t begin to articulate my case, much less sway the judge. I lost that round.

Determined not to lose the all-important important hearing number two, against the Times and Tronc, I asked my law firm to meet for a strategy session. Bafflingly, they refused to confer or to send a more senior litigator to the next one. Another defeat was guaranteed.

Then my firm fired me — days before that key anti-SLAPP hearing. I had no idea that was even a thing, that that could happen.

I swear — it wasn’t me. I was professional and polite every step of the way. I have no idea why they left me hanging.

Normally in such situations, legal experts told me, the court grants a “continuance,” legalese for a delay, to give me time to look for a new attorney and allow him or her to familiarize themselves with the case. But it helps a lot if the opposing side says they’re OK with it.

A continuance is typically freely granted, even during the most ferocious legal battles. After all, you might be the one with a family emergency or whatever next time.

But Kelli Sager smelled blood. Figuring I’d be easier to defeat without legal representation, she fought ferociously against my requests for a continuance. Thus came about the following absurdity:

I found a new lawyer. But he needed a few weeks to get up to speed. True to her standard scorched-earth approach to litigation, Sager refused to grant me the courtesy of a continuance. So I was forced to rep myself in pro per (that’s what they call pro se in California) on July 14th.

My heart was pounding as I approached the plaintiff’s table, standing parallel to Sager. And I’m an experienced speaker! I’ve held my own on FoxNews. I’ve spoken to audiences of hundreds of people. I’ve hosted talk-radio shows. Yet dropping dead of a heart attack felt like a real possibility. I can’t imagine what this would feel like for someone unaccustomed to arguing in public.

The judge asked me to proceed. I nervously worked from prepared notes, explaining why my case wasn’t a “SLAPP” (a frivolous lawsuit I didn’t intend to win, filed just to harass the Times), that the anti-SLAPP law didn’t apply. I attacked the Times’ argument that their libelous articles were “privileged” (allowed) under anti-SLAPP because they were merely “reporting” on “official police records” about my 2001 jaywalking arrest.

If they’d been “reporting,” the articles would have had to follow the Times’ Ethical Guidelines, which ban anonymous sources, require careful analysis of evidence and calling subjects of criticism for comment. They didn’t come close. These weren’t news stories or even opinion pieces; they were hit jobs.

I explained that the records weren’t official at all, the LAPD denied releasing Beck’s unprovenanced audio, which differed from the official one at LAPD HQ. Much of the discussion was about legal minutiae rather than the broad strokes of what my case is about: I wrote a blog for latimes.com, the Times edited it and posted it, Chief Beck gave the Times a blank audio they said showed I’d lied about what I wrote, I had the audio cleaned up and it showed I’d told the truth, rather than issue a retraction when they found out they were wrong the Times refused to change their behavior and continued to insist I’d lied.

There’s also the big picture: if a newspaper’s parent company sells its stock to the police, and that newspaper’s publisher is a crony of the police chief who accepts awards from the police union, how can readers trust that newspaper not to suppress criticism of the police? Do Black Lives really Matter if investigations of police brutality don’t always make it to print, if writers and cartoonists have learned they can get fired and libeled if they annoy the cops?

I will soon receive a transcript of the hearing. I will post it at Rall.com.

Sager’s counterargument boiled down to: newspapers can publish anything they want, even lies, because the First Amendment protects free speech — as if libel and defamation law don’t exist.

Her defense for the Times was not that I lied. The audio makes clear that I didn’t. Her defense, the defense for a newspaper, was that the truth doesn’t matter.

Arguments ran over two hours.

On June 21st the judge ruled against my erstwhile lawyer directly from the bench.

On July 14th, I at least gave the judge something to think about. He took the matter “under consideration.”

I await his decision.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall) is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

SYNDICATED COLUMN: How I Found Out That the Courts Are Off-Limits to the 99%

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Ted Rall

Image result for court fees expensive            I’m suing the Los Angeles Times. I’m the plaintiff. I’m the one who was wronged. The Times should be defending themselves from my accusations that they fired and libeled me as a favor to a police chief.

But this is America.

Deep-pocketed defendants like the Times — owned by a corporation with the weird name Tronc and a market capitalization in excess of $400 million — are taking advantage of America’s collapsing court system to turn justice on its head. In worn-out Trump-era America, the corruption and confusion that used to be associated with the developing world has been normalized.

If you’re a big business like Tronc, you may be the defendant on paper but you have all the advantages in court. Your money allows you to put the plaintiff on the defense. You’re equal in the eyes of the law — theoretically. But it doesn’t feel like justice when the victim has to defend himself from the criminal. It’s like that song “Lola,” in which the Kinks sang “girls will be boys and boys will be girls”; the courts system is a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.

States like California passed anti-SLAPP laws to defend individuals with modest incomes (like me) against deep-pocketed plaintiffs (like the Times) that file frivolous lawsuits to intimidate and harass their critics. After an anti-SLAPP motion is filed, the case freezes until a judge decides whether the case is meritorious. If the judge says it’s frivolous, it’s dismissed and the poor individual defendant gets his or her attorney’s fees paid by the deep-pocked corporation plaintiff.

After I sued them for defamation and wrongful termination, the Times filed three “anti-SLAPP” motions against me. So if the judge decides I don’t have a good case, this middle-class individual plaintiff will have to pay deep-pocketed defendant Tronc’s legal fees. The Troncies want at least $300,000.

Talk about topsy-turvy! The legislature should fix this law but they won’t because there’s zero political movement in that direction. I may be the only journalist to have criticized anti-SLAPP laws in a public forum. Articles about anti-SLAPP feature nothing but praise.

There were three motions. I lost one on June 21st, against the individual Times employees and executives involved in libeling me. (I plan to appeal.) That loss prompted a parting of ways with my attorneys. What followed was a month of representing myself pro se (in California they call it in pro per).

I now have new lawyers, and we’re waiting to hear how I did arguing against ace lawyer Kelli Sager’s anti-SLAPP motions for the Times and Tronc in LA Superior Court on July 14th. It sucked. But representing myself gave me a full-immersion crash course in just how messed up the courts really are.

The big thing I learned was that poor people have zero access to justice.

Nor do the middle class.

After the June 21st debacle, a semi-retired lawyer friend advised me to file a Motion for Reconsideration, a request to the judge to take another look and perhaps realize that he made some mistakes. The law gives you 10 days to file.

My Motion for Reconsideration was one of numerous motions I would have to draft and file myself while pro se. It was incredibly expensive, wildly burdensome and so daunting I bet 99% of people without a lawyer would throw up their hands and give up.

I’m the 1%.

I’m a writer. I went to an Ivy League school; I was a history major so I’m good at research. I used to work at a bank, where I worked on legal documents so I’m familiar with legalese. So I researched what works and doesn’t work in a Motion for Reconsideration. I crafted an argument. I deployed the proper tone using the right words and phrases.

Most people, not having the necessary skills or educational attainment, wouldn’t stand a prayer of writing a legal brief like this motion. Mine may fail — but the judge might read it and take it seriously because it’s written correctly.

I called the court clerk to ask how to file my motion. She was incredibly curt and mean. I’m a New Yorker so I persisted, but I could imagine other callers being put off and forgetting the whole thing.

Schedule a date for your hearing on the court’s website, the clerk told me. Good luck! The site had an outdated interface, was loaded with arcane bureaucratic jargon and a design that’s byzantine and hard to navigate. If English is your second language, forget it.

Eventually I found the place to reserve a hearing date — where I learned about the $540 filing fee.

Payable only by credit card.

No debit cards.

No Amex.

Protracted litigation against a well-funded adversary like the Times/Tronc could easily require dozens of $540 filing fees. The poor need not apply. Most Americans don’t have that kind of money. And what about people who scrape up the dough but don’t have plastic?

$10 would be too much. $540 is frigging obscene.

I paid the fee, printed out the receipt as required, stapled it to the back of my multiple required copies of the motion and went to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse to file it. As I waited in Room 102 to have my motions stamped by a clerk, I studied the many working-class people waiting in the same line.

Here too, there is no consideration for the people. The clerk’s office is open Monday to Friday 8:30 to 4:30. Most people work during those hours. Gotta file something? You have to take time off. Parking? Expensive and far away.

I have a dream.

I dream of a court system dedicated to equal justice before the law — where anyone can file a motion, where there are no filing fees, where the courthouse is open on weekends, where you can file motions by uploading them online and there’s free parking for citizens conducting business in the people’s house.

But Tronc wouldn’t like that system.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall) is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

July 14, 2017 is Bastille Day and Also I Finally Get To Tell a Court What the Los Angeles Times Did to Me

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Ted Rall
Image result for lapd chief beck
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck. The LA Times protected Beck as an anonymous source in violation of its Ethical Guidelines, which prohibit such anonymity.

If you live in or near Los Angeles and you have Friday mornings off, here’s a Save the Date: LA Superior Court, 111 North Hill Street, downtown LA. Take the elevator up to the 7th floor, to Department 74. Friday, July 14, 2017 at 9 am: be there or be square.

I’ll be defending myself against The Los Angeles Times, which colluded with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck to fire me two years ago. Personally. Pro se.

I’ll be acting as my own lawyer.

My crime? For six years my cartoons in the Times criticized the police in general, the LAPD in particular and Chief Beck personally because of his department’s deplorable history of brutalizing civilians and murdering people of color, widespread corruption and incompetence.

I don’t blame Beck, the LAPD and the LAPD police union, the Los Angeles Police and Protective League (LAPPL) for hating my guts. I’m a political cartoonist. I pissed them off. Cartoons still matter.

If LA cops were nicer and smarter, of course, they wouldn’t have gotten mad at me. They would have remembered their slogan — “to protect and to serve” — and started doing that and stopped beating up young black men. Instead, the LAPD was out to get me.

Being hated by the cops wasn’t new. In addition to the Times, I drew cartoons for Pasadena Weekly. Publisher Kevin Ulrich remembers that I was “infuriating cops, ticking off prosecutors and politicians, and regularly challenging the powers that be at City Hall.” In other words, doing my job.

“In his latest controversy, Rall suspects police officials told the Times to fire him, which would not be surprising,” Ulrich wrote in 2015. “That same request was made of me many times by Pasadena police and other city officials. If the cops in LA despised Rall half as much as did Pasadena’s Blue Crew, it is certainly believable that they would set him up for some sort of fall, just as it would probably be just a matter of time before some ‘lucky’ LAPD officer would run into him on the street.”

Indeed, that’s exactly what I learned after the Times fired and slimed me, portraying me to their readers as a liar and a fabulist in not one but two pieces. The chief of police told the Times to fire me.

So they did.

Chief Beck read a cartoon I wrote about the LAPD’s latest nasty crackdown on the phony crime of jaywalking, which disproportionately targeted working-class and people of color with $200 fines they couldn’t afford. In an online blog I wrote to accompany my toon, I mentioned that I’d been arrested for jaywalking by a mean cop in 2001. The officer, I wrote, had falsely accused me of jaywalking. He threw me against a wall and handcuffed me. An angry crowd gathered.

Beck strolled the single block between the Times and LAPD HQ and walked into the office of then-publisher Austin Beutner. Beutner, a billionaire, didn’t have newspaper experience. But he wanted to be mayor. And Beck was his only major political ally.

The LAPD had long enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Times. The paper relied on the cops for tips, especially after years of slashing the budget for reporters. Cops even ate in the Times cafeteria (me, I had to sign in). But things had gotten even more lovey-dovey under Beutner.

A couple of months after Beutner became publisher, the LAPPL awarded its pet billionaire its “Badge & Eagle Award” for “their dedication to law enforcement” and supporting the LAPD “in all that they do.” Never mind the paper’s “ethical guidelines,” which state: “Awards: Staff members should enter their work only in contests whose central purpose is to recognize journalistic excellence.”

Newspaper stocks have been reliable losers for a long time. But the LAPPL viewed Tribune Publishing, the Times’ parent company, as a solid investment — in influence. As Tribune’s stock plunged, the LAPPL spent tens of millions in pension funds to effectively become the Times’ #1 shareholder. Nothing new there — back in 2009, the LAPPL bought a chunk of the San Diego Union-Tribune, then told a newspaper that that investment bought influence, influence it planned to use to force the firing of editorial writers it didn’t deem sufficiently pro-cop. That paper was the Times.

            Whole lotta cozy going on.

Beck gave Beutner an audio recording secretly made by my cop back in 2001. This proves Ted Rall lied, Beck told him. It shows no angry crowd. No handcuffing. No mistreatment.

The audio was almost all static and traffic noise.

After they canned me and published their first attempt to destroy my journalistic career and send a chilling message to police critics, I had Beck’s secret audio sent to a company that cleaned up some of the noise.

“Take off his handcuffs!” one woman yelled at the cop.

People were on there, all right. And they had lots to say — angry things about police brutality — to the cop.

Did the Times admit they messed up? Nope. They doubled down, publishing a second piece — this one full of even more lies.

So I sued. Did they admit they messed up? Nope. They doubled down, filing a “anti-SLAPP” motion that — get this — argues that I censored the Times with my lawsuit. For having the temerity to try to clean up my libeled reputation, the Times is asking a judge to force me to pay their legal fees — which they say will be at least $300,000.

I lost the first of three anti-SLAPP motions. The main event, against the Times itself, is Friday, July 14th. My attorneys fired me after the first loss, so I’ll be on my own. That’s right: I’ll be representing myself in court.

If you care about a free press, please be there. I’m free for lunch after.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall) is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Got Justice? I Desperately Need Your Help.

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Ted Rall

I need a new lawyer.

A courageous lawyer in LA? They’re hard to find. When I Googled “crusading Los Angeles attorney,” all I found were obituaries. But that’s what I need — because my lawyer dumped me days before the most crucial hearing of my case.

Image result for latimes lapd

So if you know a great wrongful termination and/or defamation lawyer in LA or in CA and able to litigate in LA, I need to hear from you post haste. You can email me here.

In 2015 I sued the LA Times for defamation and wrongful termination. This was after they published two articles accusing me of lying in a blog post based on an audio tape they claimed to have gotten from the LAPD. In fact, the audio proved I’d told the truth — but the Times still refuses to admit they’re wrong, publish a retraction and give me back my job as a cartoonist.

Rather than do the right thing and back down, the Times hit me with three “anti-SLAPP motions” that accuses mean old me, their former $300/week cartoonist, of suppressing the First Amendment rights of sweet little LA Times, owned by a wee $416 million corporation. They want me to pay them $300,000 for their legal fees. Believe it or not, they claim in LA Superior Court that they have the right to lie and defame people because they’re a newspaper and because there’s a “public interest” in what they publish.

On June 21, the Times won the first of their three anti-SLAPP hearings, against the individual defendants: Austin Beutner, the ex-publisher who received the sketchy audio from his pal LAPD Chief Charlie Beck; reporter Paul Pringle, who pretended to investigate it; and the authors of the two libelous articles about me, Nick Goldberg and Deirdre Edgar. This can be appealed within 60 days.

I can’t get into detail about what went down with my law firm, but the basics are this: I was always super polite and nice. After our June 21 defeat, I wanted to meet with my lawyers to discuss strategy so that we didn’t get beaten again at the June 28 hearing, the main event against the LA Times and Tronc, the Times’ parent company. They said no, they didn’t have time. I asked for a more experienced litigator. They said no.

They sent me a Notice of Termination. I don’t know why.

(To any lawyer reading this and considering whether to look at my case: I’ll send you all this stuff so you can see I’m telling you the real deal.)

So here’s the deal: Unless I find a new lawyer by Friday, July 14th, I — former $300/week cartoonist — will have to appear pro se, representing myself on California’s complicated anti-SLAPP law against one of the state’s top experts in the field, a partner at a giant law firm. It will be very Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but I’m not a lawyer.

If I get a lawyer, he or she will get a few weeks to familiarize themselves with the case.

Lawyers all over California are turning me down: not enough time, too busy, on vacation, too complicated, troublesome to take over a case from another lawyer, conflict of interest. Even so, most agree that if we can get past anti-SLAPP and get our case in front of a jury, they will rule for justice and against the LA Times, which has been corrupted by the LAPD.

I knew there would be bumps in the road when I decided to take on the LA Times and by extension the LAPD, and this is a big one. I desperately need your help.

I can’t do this alone.

P.S. People are asking about the ACLU of Southern California. They are not returning my calls or emails.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: I’m in Awe of the Liars at the Los Angeles Times

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Ted Rall

Image result for liar

There’s a scene in the movie “Idiocracy” in which a character cheers as cops blow a car to smithereens. “That’s your car!” another, less dumb, character points out. The idiot, a lawyer named Frito, keeps cheering.

I felt kind of like the less-dumb guy in Los Angeles Superior Court a week ago, when I watched a lawyer for the Los Angeles Times defame me and twist the facts to a level rarely seen outside a White House press briefing.

I was Kelli Sager’s victim. Sager, a partner at the pro-business law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, is a shark. She argued before a judge that the Times was right to knowingly lie about me in its pages, that the First Amendment meant the Times was immune from defamation and libel law, and that I should pay the Times hundreds of thousands of dollars for their legal fees for having had the temerity to sue them.

And, she was successful (for the time being). It was strangely thrilling to watch a professional — granted, a professional dissembler for a newspaper corrupted beyond belief — at the top of her game.

To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson: when the lying gets weird, the liars turn pro.

For decades, the Los Angeles Times was one of the best newspapers in the United States. It was arguably the best full-service paper — like the New York Times, LA had all the foreign bureaus and deep national and local coverage required of a great news organization, along with the features New York doesn’t carry but readers like me enjoy: comics, horoscopes and advice columns.

Every newspaper has struggled to adapt to the Internet. But the LA Times has had more trouble than most. If I were in charge, I’d rebrand it. The New York Times is the national paper of news and culture, the Washington Post is the national paper of politics, the Wall Street Journal is the national paper of business, and the Los Angeles Times ought to be the national paper of entertainment — movies, music and gaming. Instead, the LA Times is doing things the same way they did in 1997, but less so.

Things turned from bad to worse in 2000, when the Tribune Company (as in the Chicago Tribune) acquired the Times. Flailing ensued. The Times’ idiocy culminated in 2005 with “Wikitorial,” a bizarre experiment that allowed readers to add to editorial content. In 2007 Tribune sold itself to real estate mogul Sam Zell, who ran up debt, sucked money out of the company and “busted” it, declaring bankruptcy a year later. It was the beginning of the end.

I began working for the Times in 2009.

Desperate for cash, the Times turned to a sketchy Los Angeles financier and billionaire with no journalistic experience, Austin Beutner, naming him as publisher in 2014. Beutner, a political ally of the LAPD who received an award for “support [to] the LAPD in all that they do” from the LAPD union months after taking over the Times, appears to have midwifed the first known acquisition of a major American newspaper by a government agency: the LAPD union moved its $16.4 billion pension fund to a Beverly Hills investment firm called Oaktree Capital, which then became the #1 shareholder of Tribune, the Times’ parent company.

Like cats and mice, cops and newspapers shouldn’t go into business together. In 2015, billionaire Beutner fired me as a favor to his friend, the allegedly corrupt $300,000-a-year LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, whom I had criticized in my cartoons. They used evidence that turned out to have been trumped-up, and which boomeranged because it supported me, to smear me as a liar and fabulist. So, I sued them for defamation and wrongful termination. The Times then fired Beutner.

On June 21, the court heard the Times’ first of three anti-SLAPP motions against me. Anti-SLAPP motions are supposed to protect free speech, but in this case the Times — part of a $420 million media conglomerate — is asking the court to dismiss my case and charge me at least $300,000 in their legal fees.

The Times has been busy in court. They’re also fighting a pair of age discrimination lawsuits filed by a sports columnist and a Pulitzer-winning reporter who say the Times tried to save money by harassing them into quitting their jobs.

Nothing is sure in life or in court, but I feel confident than a jury would agree with me that what the Times did to me was wrong. I think Kelli Sager, the Times’ lawyer agrees. Which is why she’s been working hard to keep my case away from a jury.

On June 21, Sager fed the judge a bunch of nonsense, but two things she said during oral arguments especially blew me away.

Referencing the first of two articles which falsely accused me of being a fabulist, Sager told the judge that the Times had included links to LAPD records (they’re not really from the LAPD but that’s another story) so Times readers could judge for themselves. No, actually, they didn’t. No one objected.

Sager even brought up race. She accused me, as a white man, of falsely accusing the African-American cop who arrested me for jaywalking in 2001 of misconduct —because he was black.

The mind boggles.

As we walked down the escalator, my lawyer remarked that I had never told her the cop was black. “Because I never mentioned it,” I told her. “Because it wasn’t important.”

I’m in awe.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall) is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

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