NEWS
By Alene Tchekmedyian, alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com | October 16, 2013
A Burbank resident has filed a lawsuit against the city claiming that Burbank's long-running practice of transferring funds from the city's utility to its General Fund is illegal. The suit calls upon the court to order the city to quash the practice, records show. In a petition for writ of mandate filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Christopher Spencer argued that the city's practice of transferring utility funds to the city's General Fund, which pays for most public services, has illegally hiked up water rates to the point where they “exceed the reasonable costs” of providing the service.
THE818NOW
June 28, 2013
Burbank residents Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo - plaintiffs who helped take Proposition 8 all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court - are slated to be married by outgoing Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa this evening. The announcement came shortly after a federal appeals court opened the way for same-sex weddings to resume in California. Katami and Zarillo, together with a lesbian couple from Berkeley, were plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case that was decided by the Supreme Court earlier this week.
THE818NOW
June 26, 2013
Five words this morning from one of the Burbank residents whose fight to overturn Proposition 8 has taken him and his partner all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court: “On way to SCOTUS. Hopeful.” Those words, posted by Paul Katami on Twitter this morning, sum up much of what he and his longtime partner, Jeff Zarrillo, have said about their journey to the Supreme Court, which is expected to issue its ruling at 10 a.m. EST on gay marriage and California's voter-approved Proposition 8. The Burbank residents, together with a lesbian couple from Northern California, have been the lead plaintiffs against that measure, which defined marriage as being between a man and woman.
THE818NOW
June 26, 2013
Late last year, after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to take up the Proposition 8 case, Paul Katami of Burbank - one of the lead plaintiffs - expressed what he hoped would happen at its end. “We hope that history has taught us one thing: that the courts are there to protect us.” In a way, they were. In what experts are already calling a puzzling majority decision, the Supreme Court, in a procedural ruling, turned away the defenders of Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that limited marriage to the union of a man and a woman.
NEWS
By Megan O'Neil, megan.oneil@latimes.com | November 3, 2010
The family of a Burbank teenager who had a sexual relationship with his middle school teacher has filed a lawsuit against the school district alleging that it failed to safeguard the student from an aggressive predator. In March, Amy Beck, a sixth-grade teacher at Jordan Middle School, shocked the Burbank community when she turned herself in to police for having sex with her then-14-year-old student, who has not been identified. The liaison took place from March to September 2009, and involved sex acts at the teacher's Burbank home and on the Jordan Middle School campus, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
LOCAL
By Christopher Cadelago | March 20, 2010
A black police officer does not have a discrimination case against the Burbank Police Department, a judge ruled Thursday, dismissing Jamal Childs as a plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by five minority officers in May. The ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joanne O’Donnell does not affect the other four plaintiffs, who allege numerous instances of race- and gender-based bias, harassment and retaliation, and that the department allowed...
LOCAL
By Melanie Hicken | January 12, 2010
GLENDALE ? Metrolink has agreed to pay roughly $39 million to settle all but one of the lawsuits filed against the agency in the aftermath of a January 2005 derailment that killed 11 passengers on the Glendale border, an attorney for the plaintiffs said Wednesday. Of the 186 complaints filed against the agency in the wake of the accident, all but one of the suits have been resolved, said Jerome Ringler, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. All 11 wrongful death lawsuits have been settled, and 15 of the 16 serious-injury lawsuits have been resolved.
FEATURES
June 17, 2009
Plaintiffs should ease up on Disney In your June 10 and 13 editions you ran articles regarding claims that the Walt Disney Co. supposedly contaminated groundwater (“Disney dumped illegally, suit says,” June 10). The articles continued on regarding the opinions of the Burbank Rancho Homeowners Assn., the plaintiffs, who seek damages and penalties and are alleging violations by Disney despite a concurrent investigation by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control that revealed chromium levels in the area to be “below levels of concern” and within California environmental limits.