City Seeks to Halt Release of Depositions : Lawsuit: An attorney for the Warner Ridge developer says the move is a bid to shield potentially embarrassing comments by politicians.

The Los Angeles city attorney asked a judge Wednesday to stop the release of depositions made by city officials in the Warner Ridge lawsuit, but opposing attorneys said the request was an attempt to prevent the exposure of politically embarrassing comments made by City Council members.

Depositions of council members Joy Picus, John Ferraro and Zev Yaroslavsky were among those taken in the $100-million lawsuit filed by developers of Warner Ridge, who claim that the city misled them into believing that they could build a high-rise commercial project on their Woodland Hills tract.

The suit, which argues that the project was blocked illegally, names the City Council as a whole and Picus, Ferraro and Yaroslavsky specifically.

A 1,750-page transcript of Picus’ deposition was released to news organizations last week. In it, Picus bluntly described the back-room politicking that underscored the debate over the project.

She detailed her efforts to scuttle Warner Ridge Associates’ proposed office complex on land between Pierce College and Warner Center. The deposition also showed how fully Picus was guided by political instincts rather than land-use expertise in seeking to block the project. At a hearing in the chambers of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathryn Doi Todd, Deputy City Atty. Glenn Calsada asked for an order temporarily preventing any further release of documents in the case.

Robert I. McMurry, the attorney representing Warner Ridge Associates and who released the Picus transcript, said after the hearing that Calsada asked Todd to shield the depositions because they “could prove embarrassing” to Ferraro and Yaroslavsky if made public.

“He said those two individuals would be greatly embarrassed,” McMurry said.

Calsada disagreed with McMurry’s version of the hearing.

“I am not saying they can be embarrassing,” Calsada said of the depositions. “I am saying they may contain irrelevant material that would place the council members in false light.” He did not elaborate.

Todd is expected to rule on the issue today. The Warner Ridge lawsuit is set for trial in January.

Calsada said the depositions are not yet part of the public record and cannot be released before a trial unless both sides agree to their disclosure. He said release of all the materials obtained during pretrial discovery could prevent a fair trial.

“They could subject the city to not have a fair trial because it will be tried in the press,” Calsada said.

Calsada said his office also intends to ask Todd at a later date to disallow use of the Picus deposition in the trial because it was released to the media before Picus had a chance to make corrections and other changes in her answers--a routine practice after giving a deposition.

Calsada said Picus cannot make those changes now because she would be held up to ridicule in the media if she modified any of the exchanges she had with Warner Ridge attorneys.

McMurry said the depositions merit release because they involve public officials discussing how they went about performing public functions. He said efforts to seal them would be in violation of the First Amendment.

“The ability of the press and members of the public to scrutinize the conduct of government officials in the performance of their public duties is the essence of the First Amendment,” McMurry wrote in his argument to Todd. “One can well imagine why the city officials would wish their conduct here not to be publicly scrutinized . . . but that is precisely the accountability to the public that characterizes First Amendment law.”

McMurry also claimed that city officials have already released information pertaining to the case. He said Picus has spoken numerous times to the media about the dispute.

He also supplied Todd with a partial transcript of the April 18 deposition of Robert Gross, president of a Woodland Hills homeowners group that opposed the Warner Ridge proposal.

In the transcript, Gross acknowledged that he had asked Picus’ office for a copy of a deposition taken from a former Picus aide involved in the case, then found one left on his doorstep one night. Gross said he later returned the transcript to Picus’ office.

“Apparently the city does not feel its privacy interests and right to a fair trial are implicated when city officials ‘go public,’ ” McMurry said in court documents. “It is only when their own statements under oath are used to contradict their self-serving public statements that the city becomes wounded. Nonsense!”

Yaroslavsky and Ferraro could not be reached Wednesday, and spokeswomen for both deferred to the city attorney’s comments on the case.

In Picus’ deposition, she outlined how she used both councilmen in her efforts to defeat the Warner Ridge proposal.

She said she got Ferraro to sign the January, 1990, rezoning of the Warner Ridge property while the mayor was out of town and Ferraro was acting mayor.

The council’s decision to zone the land for construction of single-family estate houses was aimed at blocking the office building project. Picus had expected Bradley to veto the measure.

Picus also said she found out prior to the April, 1989, council election that Warner Ridge partner Jack Spound had conducted a poll regarding her chances for reelection and that she feared that the poll would hurt her chances.

She said she spoke to Yaroslavsky, who is a friend of Spound’s, and told him to let Spound know that he would be “chopped liver” if the poll results were released. But she also asked Yaroslavsky to convey her willingness to compromise on the issue if Spound kept the results private.