North Hollywood Bank Robbery

[kma367]

This happened in L.A. in February, 1997. I'm watching a show from Investigation Discovery about events.

For those of you who don't know about it, two violent career felons, Larry Phillips and Emil Mataseranu armed themselves with heavy-duty automatic weapons with armor piercing rounds and robbed a bank in North Hollywood. They were also wearing body armor. Police officers spotted the two going into the bank and set up a perimeter. When Phillips and Mataseranu came out of the bank, they were surrounded. They fired at police officers for 44 minutes, wounding numerous officers and civilians.

SWAT eventually reached the scene. Phillips killed himself. Mataseranu was taken down by SWAT and died on the scene.

A lawsuit was filed on behalf of Mataseranu's children accusing LAPD officers of letting him die. Anyone else outraged by that?

kma367

[Deleted]

I remember watching parts of this on TV. It was quite surreal.

People in Europe often tend to shake their head and/or laugh when reading about what people in the U.S. sue each other for. Not saying that to put anyone down, civil law just work differently here. Ofcourse, when it comes to our criminal law system, we're the ones lacking in some respects. Anyways....in this case, Mataseranu was not an innocent bystander, he was the aggressor. I think the childrens' lawsuit is absurd.

[kma367]

The jury in federal court apparently didn't believe that he was allowed to die or tortured by LAPD as the plaintiffs claimed. The trial in 2000 resulted in a hung jury and mistrial. Yagman, the plaintiffs' attorney, agreed to dismiss the lawsuit in exchange for a promise not to sue him for malicious prosecution.

In 2006, Yagman (whose license to practice law has been in jeopardy many times over many years in California) was convicted of tax evasion and is now serving time in a federal prison. When he gets out, his license to practice law will be gone.

kma367