Reformation at the OC District Attorney’s office won’t take place overnight, according to newly minted DA Todd Spitzer. But the hard-charging prosecutor and former OC Supervisor made it clear that remaking the office (with hundreds of attorneys, and a roughly $145 million annual budget) in his mold has been priority No. 1 since taking over office from longtime DA/political nemesis Tony Rackauckas in January.
“I’m giving myself a year” to institute a series of changes, Spitzer said in a meeting with the Insider and Business Journal Publisher Richard Reisman last week, around the time of his most public show of reformation at the office: making outreach to the Department of Justice administrators to begin settlement talks regarding the “snitch scandal” that embroiled his predecessor’s last years in office.
Dealing with the DOJ—Spitzer has proposed his office be put on probation—is an outward sign of change at the DA’s office. Internally, he said he’s been involved in dozens of interviews with potential new legal hires; the office has seen more than its share of attorney departures of late, mostly retirement-related.
Spitzer said he’s enamored of grads from OC’s law schools, with University of California-Irvine getting particular plaudits. Street smarts and a willingness to do the dirty work often involved in the DA’s office is a must too, he said.
Unlikely Spitzer would ever allow his office to publicly put champagne and beer on ice prior to a verdict in a case they were trying.
But that’s said to have happened in a case that concluded last month in Federal Judge Andrew Guilford’s Santa Ana courtroom, when L.A.-based breast cancer drug developer Puma Biotechnology faced a potential company-ending, $1 billion judgment in a rare securities class action case that made it to jury.
The Insider hears that the plaintiffs and their law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd were prepared for all but the celebratory Gatorade bath when the verdict came in—largely exonerating Puma, whose trial team was led by Latham & Watkins’ Andrew Clubok and Michele Johnson.
Johnson, a partner at L&W’s Costa Mesa office, said damages for the plaintiffs are likely to ultimately come in at $18 million or less. She calls it a clear win. The “jury’s verdict amounted to an almost complete exoneration” of her client, she said.
No word if the plaintiff’s champagne was left uncorked post-verdict.
You can tell a lot about a car company’s culture by checking out its office’s parking lot.
Some of the area’s big automakers give preferential spots to workers who drive their cars, with other employees forced to park offsite.
What you’ll see at Karma Automotive’s very full employee parking lot: about a dozen or so workers drive their company’s cars to work. And only two Teslas were on site during a mid-February visit. For more on Karma, see Subrina Hudson’s page 1 feature.
