Hazle’s attorney announced they had settled his lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and a substance abuse treatment firm a year after the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a lower court had screwed up. "The state defendants violated his constitutional rights," the court ruled. "We are aware of no cases in which we have affirmed a zero-damages verdict when, as here, the existence of actual injury was indisputable.”   read more

The trio that towed 89-year-old Sarah Cheiker across country and left her in a crummy Maine cabin never did jail time and no one ever definitively figured out how her home in Los Angeles was sold to pay for the three-year odyssey, according to Bob Pool, who spun the tale at the Los Angeles Times over the weekend. And there are no indications anyone will.   read more

The government accused the son of amassing assets worth $300 million on an annual salary of less than $100,000 “through corruption and money laundering, in violation of both Equatoguinean and U.S. law.” The government did not get all of the son’s loot. The Los Angeles Times said he managed to ship half his property out of the U.S., including a Bentley, a Bugatti, a Rolls Royce and Jackson’s $275,000 white glove from the “Bad” tour.   read more

It started with a solitary clown spotted late at night wandering the streets of Wasco. The creepy clown was spotted multiple times just milling about in isolated locations and, as clowns often do, raised mixed emotions of bemusement and fear among local residents. And then it got weird, or weirder. Other clowns began appearing at night, dressed in different outfits.   read more

Mellen was convicted of orchestrating the killing of her ex-boyfriend, Richard Daly, over his alleged theft of goods from her mother’s home. The jury believed the testimony of Mellen’s friend, June Patti, who said the accused had confided in her details of the crime. What they didn’t know was Patti, who had a lengthy arrest record, had been called an “unreliable informant” by the Torrance Police Department five years earlier after a series of tips from her proved to be false.   read more

Although the complex program would be impossible to effectively execute on a mass scale outside a clinical setting, it offered the possibility that memory erosion among sufferer’s of the affliction is not permanent. “I think we will look back on this as being the first report that really starts research down the correct road to finding answers to dementing diseases,” Dr. David Jones, president of the Institute for Functional Medicine in Federal Way, told the Marin Independent Journal.   read more

When Cedars-Sinai Medical Center announced in August that one its laptops had been stolen in June, officials said the records of 500 patients may have been compromised. That wasn’t wrong, since 500 is less than 33,136—the new, improved estimate of victims released last week. The unencrypted files were on a laptop taken home by an employee who troubleshoots clinical laboratory software problems outside regular business hours.   read more

Senate Bill 1253 requires a 30-day public review and amendment process after an initiative is introduced. Sponsors get an extra 30 days (a full six months) to gather signatures, but must notify lawmakers when they have 25%, who can then conduct hearings on the measure. Proponents would have the option of amending their initiatives based on that input. The state will notify the public who the top 10 donors are on each side of the issue.   read more

The state’s drought has helped introduce the non-native plants that produce the iconic nuisance to areas that were once too moist to support them. The result is a statewide infestation of green spindly bushes that threaten farming, and the dry, prickly tumbling tumbleweeds that are beginning to plague more urban areas. After a decade of research scientists are ready to unleash two fungi—Colletotrichum salsolae and Uromyces salsolae—from the steppes of Eurasia that are known to kill tumbleweeds.   read more

“We see no validity whatsoever in any application that would seek to auction off public parking spaces to the highest bidder . . . and we will take whatever steps we can to prevent its use in Santa Monica,” City Manager Rod Gould said. He said the city council would see an ordinance banning the app startup within a couple weeks. So that’s a maybe, right?   read more

The lawyer's 50-plus pics of her with celebrities, including President Obama, that reside on the site are photoshopped. She refuses to take them down and that defiance, the photos themselves and some other shenanigans earned the Los Angeles lawyer a recommended six-month suspension of her legal license by State Bar Judge Donald F. Miles.   read more

On Friday, those diverted to the "Lexus lane" began receiving fines in the mail for illegally traveling in the fast lane without the requisite transponder and Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) account. Transportation officials said people don’t have to pay the fine, but the only notification of that was a brief note on the Metro ExpressLanes home page:   read more

The inspection form approved by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority lists “body odor” as one of 52 criteria airport officers can use to boot someone out of the taxi queue. In addition to inspecting a vehicle’s body condition, internal cleanliness, brakes, lights, the heater, etc., officers can check for “foul interior odors” in general, and body odor in particular.   read more

The school came under fire last November when an “appalled” American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) complained that the bearded, snarling, giant-hook-nosed character in traditional headdress was a “harmful form of ethnic stereotyping.” The committee said the high school was the only one in the nation with a demeaning Arab mascot.   read more

Bowen told the Los Angeles Times she has moved out of the home she shares with her husband, California’s Department of Conservation Director Mark Nechodom, and into a rented trailer after a difficult episode of the problem she has wrestled with since college. She is currently working from her new home. “I know this territory,” she said. “Work is anyplace I have a telephone. Just because I'm physically not in the office doesn't mean I don't know what's going on and that I'm not participating.”   read more

63-year-old Pamela Devitt died in May 2013 when four of Jackson’s pit bulls attacked her in the small Southern California town of Littlerock. Prosecutors said they had evidence that Jackson’s dogs were involved in at least seven other incidents prior to the Devitt attack. Horseback riders told stories of the dogs biting their horses, nipping at their boots and chasing them down a trail. Mail carriers had nothing good to say about them.   read more