Vince v. City of Los Angeles

All Matthew McNicholas needed to do to win $4,37 million in compensatory damages for an injured LAPD lieutenant who the police department refused to accommodate was "present the evidence and get out of the way," he said.

Some of that evidence included several years of Lt. Lou Vince being assigned to field duty despite his constant pain following back surgery, officials repeatedly loaning him out to scattered divisions for work assignments that didn't exist, and a deputy chief's secret file on him that had been destroyed, McNicholas said.

Douglas D. Winter

Like many police officers, Vince developed back problems after years of wearing the required 30 pounds of tactical vest and service belt. Unlike many officers, he had to undergo spinal fusion surgery. When he then requested desk duty or other accommodations, his commanders refused, his lawsuit claims. As his requests piled up, the department retaliated against him for several years with a series of adverse actions, including passing him over for promotions. Vince v. City of Los Angeles, BC704165 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed April 27, 2018).

"They just kept bouncing him around out in Valley Bureau," McNicholas said. "They'd just have him show up and there would be no assignment. ... It happened about 10 times in a five-year span."

The city's defense at trial was that Vince didn't suffer harm because he didn't lose his salary and he wasn't demoted. His many temporary assignments were loans, not official transfers, so they wouldn't damage his career, a deputy chief testified.

But from his two decades' experience suing the LAPD, McNicholas knew that claim was ridiculous, he said. On cross-examination, the deputy chief conceded that the loans would appear on certain forms and could "be really bad for him."

One important moment during the trial was when the Valley Bureau's deputy chief had to admit that he'd kept a secret file about Vince and two others suing the department but then destroyed it well before trial. McNicholas said he told the jurors that the file was to "collect dirt on [Vince] so they could cover themselves, and they didn't want you to see it."

After two weeks of trial, the 12-person jury voted unanimously in favor of the plaintiff. When the city's lawyers moved for a new trial, the judge refused, saying, "You essentially tortured this man for five years," according to McNicholas.

Trial attorneys James Autrey and Susan Rim from the city attorney's office did not respond to a request to discuss the case.

The final judgment totaled $5.1 million, which the city paid in late December.

"This was not a case you had to Houdini," McNicholas said. "You just had to marshal the evidence forward ... [and] knock out their BS."

-- Don DeBenedictis