Escondido Legacy of Death Drags on in Lawsuit

The legacy of Leslie Landersman lives on, not only in the hearts of the young husband she left behind, along with her mother and sister, but in a protracted civil lawsuit that remains unresolved years after her tragic death.

Parties in the case will show up in Vista Superior Court Tuesday morning with the hope of being assigned a courtroom to try the case once and for all--but it’s a promise that has been made--and broken--before because of a crowded court calendar. Indeed, it seems likely that the case will not be put to a jury until next summer.

On its face, the lawsuit seeks upwards of $1 million in damages from the City of Escondido because of Leslie Landersman’s death from police bullets on Aug. 26, 1983, when she was taken hostage by a bank robber and mistakenly slain in an ensuing gun battle.

The killing is perhaps the darkest day in the history of the Escondido Police Department. It led to criminal complaints and a reworking of the Police Department’s training, rules and regulations regarding hostage situations.

Money Not the Answer

To her family, the issue of Leslie Landersman’s death goes far beyond financial compensation. If money was the answer, they say, they might have settled for damages in a compromise agreement with the city’s insurance carrier years ago so they could have put the tragedy behind them once and for all.

“The fact is, they cannot pay us what they owe us. They can’t return to us what they took away,” Mark Landersman, Leslie’s husband, said outside a Vista Superior Court room last week. The couple had been married on Easter Sunday of that year, only 4 1/2 months before she was killed.

“What we want is a viewpoint from the community--a jury--that there was wrongdoing. We’re still looking for the whole picture to be shown about what happened that day, and we want to hear what the city can possibly say to justify it,” Landersman, 28, said.

Attorney Melvin Belli and his associate, Richard Brown, are representing Landersman and the victim’s mother, Marlene Cook. They spent much of last Tuesday huddling behind closed doors with Superior Court Presiding Judge Zalman Scherer, discussing a possible out-of-court settlement of the lawsuit.

The suit was scheduled to go to trial that day--the third time the suit had been scheduled to go to court--but Scherer told both parties there were no available courtrooms in which to stage the legal battle, given the backlog of criminal and other civil lawsuits that had precedence over the Landersman matter. Compounding the problem was the fact that in the understaffed Vista courts, two judges were on vacation.

Tried for an Agreement

So Scherer tried to get the two sides to reach an agreement, meeting at times only with Landersman and Marlene Cook, and at other times with only Belli and Brown.

Only at the end of the day did he call in the city’s lawyer, Robert Gallagher, along with Landersman’s attorneys, for a joint meeting. A few minutes later, they appeared and said no settlement could be reached and that the suit appeared destined for trial--although perhaps not until next August, given the jammed court schedule. Come back next Tuesday, Scherer said last week, and a decision will be made on whether a courtroom can be found or whether to put the lawsuit on hold for another year.

Neither side would discuss the terms of any possible settlement and both characterized as inaccurate published figures that Belli’s clients would settle for $500,000 and that the city had offered $250,000. According to its liability insurance policy, the city would pay the first $100,000 in damages and the carrier would pick up the balance.

Brown, who has done most of the groundwork for the case and will be at Belli’s side when a jury finally hears it, said the City of Escondido and its insurance company “never made a realistic offer of settlement in the case. It has been four years (since the shooting), and two police officers (DeLange and another officer at the scene) have received full medical disabilities or pensions because of the case, and the family of the innocent victim has received no compensation. I just don’t think that’s right.”

“Had there been a fair settlement offer, I’m sure we would have accepted it,” Brown said.

“There are no figures on the table now,” Belli said. “The family wants its day in court. We’ll come back next August.” Belli has a national reputation for handling personal-injury and wrongful-death cases resulting in large jury verdicts.

Too Long a Wait

At one time, he said, the family had discussed accepting $500,000 to walk away from the lawsuit, “but after making them wait this long, if there was an offer today for $500,000, they wouldn’t accept it.”

Gallagher said that while “we would have liked to get this resolved, it makes no difference to us and we are ready to go to trial.”

He said a settlement was offered Tuesday--one that he would have accepted had he been in the family’s position. He said he would not speculate as to why the judge did not call him into chambers as well to negotiate face to face with his adversaries in the judge’s presence.

Landersman, walking out of the courtroom, said: “It’s to their (city’s) advantage to have a delay. It was a temptation to accept their offer because it’s going to take so much longer to resolve this, but I don’t need their money. We’re doing what we think is best. We want a jury to hear this case and for the whole picture to be aired, once and for all.”

Cook said after Tuesday’s session: “I need to go home and have my walk on the beach.”

Belli said he would ask a jury to award $1.2 million to $2 million in damages from the city because of the Police Department’s and Police Officer David DeLange’s alleged negligence in Landersman’s death.

The figure includes about $500,000 in lost wages had Landersman continued her job as a secretary, and more than $700,000 in general damages for “the intangibles--the loss of love and affection,” Belli said.

Greater damages could probably be won elsewhere but based on actuarial studies, juries in North County are known to be conservative in their awards, he said.

Belli a Liability?

Belli acknowledged that his high profile as a flamboyant barrister could be more a liability than an asset before a Vista jury.

“We’ll play it pretty calmly here,” he said. “They would penalize us if we did any big-city stuff. We’ll have to be careful.”

Brown estimated the trial would last three weeks. He said he and Belli planned to call about a dozen witnesses, including their two clients, Landersman and Cook.

The issue to be resolved in the trial, Brown said, “is whether the city and the Police Department offered proper training for Officer DeLange because, if they had, then this never would have occurred. The shooting was a comedy of errors--a tragic comedy.”

He said the long delay from the shooting to a jury resolution--four years, and now more likely five--”works to the benefit of the insurance company. They’ve been able to get the use of whatever money they’ll ultimately pay for the case; time dulls the memory of witnesses and witnesses have moved out of the area. That’s all to their benefit.”

The delay can be blamed both on the backlog of civil cases that is prevalent not only in Vista courts but throughout California and on legal maneuvering by both sides. And, Brown noted, when one trial date was set, Belli himself had to ask for a continuance because he was not available then to try the case; he was committed to trials elsewhere in the country.

Landersman was a 22-year-old secretary and former beauty queen who was abducted from her office, only a block away from the Escondido Police Department headquarters, by Timothy Harding minutes after Harding and two accomplices robbed a nearby bank of $5,000.

In his escape from the bank and in the ensuing pursuit by Escondido police, Harding stopped his van in front of the Police Department headquarters and ran to the nearby building where Landersman worked, forcing the woman at gunpoint to drive him in her pickup truck in a final getaway attempt. Two accomplices were captured in the van, unhurt despite a quick flurry of police gunfire.

Trapped in Cul-de-Sac

Harding and Landersman led 20 police officers on a serpentine, slow-moving chase through a residential neighborhood, where they found themselves trapped on a cul-de-sac. Police disabled the vehicle with gunfire and as Landersman tried to jump from behind the steering wheel, away from Harding’s grasp, and flee to safety, she was shot and killed by DeLange’s shotgun fire, a police investigation concluded.

Harding was also shot and killed in the same brief gun battle by a different police officer.

The Police Department’s internal investigation revealed errors on the part of its officers, including the fact that when Harding was initially stopped, police officers ended up both in front of and behind his vehicle, putting themselves in the line of their own cross-fire. Indeed, by the time the dust had settled that afternoon, one police officer had been slightly wounded by bullets fired from a comrade.

By the end of the entire 13-minute episode, 10 officers had fired their shotguns 12 times and their handguns 35 times. Five police officers were disciplined for actions found to be contrary to department policies, but the department deferred to the district attorney’s office on the handling of DeLange.

The San Diego County district attorney’s office characterized DeLange as “trigger happy” and he was indicted by a grand jury on charges of manslaughter. But he was subsequently acquitted by a jury after testifying in his own defense that, in the heat of the moment, he did not see Landersman in his line of sight as he aimed to shoot Harding.

DeLange, now 28, received a medical disability retirement from the city shortly afterward that amounted to about $850 a month--half his policeman’s salary--after three psychologists agreed that he could never again deal with police work.

The lawsuit claims that DeLange was negligent in firing his shotgun when Landersman was so close to the intended target, Harding, and further claims that Escondido police officers were not properly informed of the department’s hostage policy and not sufficiently trained to deal with such situations.

The city has maintained, in defense, that DeLange acted within his discretion as a police officer in trying to shoot Harding and that, while the results of his actions were tragic, the city and he cannot be held liable.

Landersman’s family sought $14 million from the city when it filed its initial claim.