GARY M. MESSING Founding Partner GREGG M. ADAM Founding Partner Messing Adam & Jasmine LLP Many readers will have noted the death of United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in mid-February. Perhaps no case was more affected by the timing of Justice Scalia’s passing than Friedrichs v. California Teachers […]
ALISON BERRY WILKINSON Principal Attorney Berry Wilkinson Law Group In an effort to avoid having to reinstate Santino “Sonny” Lopez after he successfully defeated his 2010 disciplinary termination, the Grover Beach Police Department ordered that he submit to a psychological fitness-for-duty examination before its handpicked “independent” expert. The finding from […]
MICHAEL WILLIAMSON, ESQ. Attorney Stone Busailah, LLP In a lesson to be learned on just why an officer might not want to be supervised by a sergeant he had previously complained about, and who was disciplined as a result of that complaint, our client, a Carlsbad police detective with more […]
JUDITH A. ODBERT Senior Associate Mastagni Holstedt, APC In a degree of scrutiny unparalleled in our nation’s history, the second-guessing of officers’ split-second decisions over self-preservation has expanded from fringe groups to some district attorneys. Prosecuting an officer has become a political feather in the cap to some. Judith A. […]
MICHAEL L. RAINS, ESQ. Principal Rains Lucia Stern, PC At the PORAC Conference last November, I presented a class on issues relating to social media postings by police officers, and discussed a number of cases where officers had been severely disciplined or fired for social media posts. One of the […]