In the Jan. 15 issue of the Morgan Hill Times story on my
lawsuit against the City of Morgan Hill (
”
Supreme Court will not hear case
”
) City Attorney Danny Wan is cited as noting
”
that the city’s resolution directed no steps against Tichinin.
It expressed disapproval of Tichinin’s unwarranted and covert
surveillance of the city manager.
”
In the Jan. 15 issue of the Morgan Hill Times story on my lawsuit against the City of Morgan Hill (“Supreme Court will not hear case”) City Attorney Danny Wan is cited as noting “that the city’s resolution directed no steps against Tichinin. It expressed disapproval of Tichinin’s unwarranted and covert surveillance of the city manager.”
Unfortunately for the city, the justices of the California Sixth District Court of Appeal did not see the city’s actions as being benevolent as the city now claims. Apparently the California Supreme Court agreed when it refused to hear the case, and also refused to “depublish” the case. (That is a fancy way of saying that they refused to consign the Court of Appeal opinion to the trash bin of history.) By so doing, the Supreme Court said, in effect, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Since all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put Humpty together again for the city, it is not surprising that there is much more to the story than the city lets on.
Besides the city’s resolution, there was the city’s “report” that implicitly defamed me and threatened me with both criminal prosecution and discipline on my license to practice law by stating that “options” available to the city as responses to the surveillance included referring the case to the District Attorney and the State Bar – even though at the time the city knew (as court-ordered release of undisclosed city documents has subsequently revealed) that: (1) the District Attorney’s office had already twice told City Manager Ed Tewes that I had committed no crime, and (2) no one – including the city’s own attorneys – had ever said I had broken any State Bar rules, or done anything illegal.
Against the wishes of its own private investigator, someone high up in the city also anonymously “leaked” to the press the investigator’s confidential report that mused groundlessly that I might be guilty of bribery and witness tampering. (Before the leak, the report was only available to the city manager, the city council and the former city attorney.)
Though he admitted later under oath in a court-ordered deposition that he had no legal grounds to support it, Councilmember Larry Carr told a Mercury News reporter, in a published story, that he thought my “threat” to sue the city on behalf of a client “sounds like blackmail.”
In a public hearing recorded by news camera crews from six TV stations throughout the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas, Mayor Steve Tate angrily declared that when it came to my Constitutional rights, he “didn’t care what the law is.”
In his later deposition, he said that my attorney’s briefing that explained those rights was “legal mumbo jumbo.” Let’s be straight here. You might not have liked what I did, but think about the next time, and the next person, and whether it could happen to you. If an elected or unelected official can punish you for doing what is legal simply by ignoring the law, then we are all in grave trouble. Indeed, they call that place North Korea.
The story in the Times made it seem that I skidded through the appellate process by the skin of my teeth. Wishing so, Toto, will not get the city back to Kansas.
The net result of the appellate process is that the Court of Appeal rolled through the arguments and contentions of the city like General George Patton’s 3rd Army rolled through Germany, only the appellate court took no prisoners. Indeed, far from characterizing my conduct as “unwarranted,” it noted, quite oppositely – just as I have maintained all along – that attorneys have a legal duty to investigate their cases and can be sanctioned if they fail to do so.
And when the city asked the California Supreme Court to ride to its rescue, it replied: get your wagons in a circle and hope for the best. Don’t call us and we won’t call you.”
Bruce Tichinin is an attorney who has practiced in Morgan Hill since 1973, and has lived in Morgan Hill since 1955, when it was an agricultural town of 3,000 persons.
