Supreme Court of California

In a prosecution of defendants-board trustees, responsible for administering the City of San Diego's (City) retirement system, for felony violations of state conflict of interest statutes for allegedly voting to authorize an agreement allowing the City to limit funding of its retirement system in exchange for the City's agreeing to provide increased pension benefits to City employees, a court of appeals' denial of defendants' motion to set aside the information against them is reversed and remanded as to five of the six defendants where: 1) with one exception, the defendant trustees' actions fall within statutory exceptions to Government Code section 1090, and accordingly, their motion to dismiss the information against them should have been granted as this case turns on the conclusion that the trustees of the City's retirement system board were not burdened by a conflict of the sort section 1090 prohibits; and 2) the sixth defendant could, on the preliminary hearing record, reasonably be suspected of having obtained a unique, personalized pension benefit as a result of voting to approve the retirement board's contract with the City and such individually tailored benefits pose genuine conflict problems and do not fall under any statutory exception.

Appellate Information

• Decided 01/25/2010
• Published 01/25/2010

Judges

• WERDEGAR, J.

Court

• Supreme Court of California

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., for Petitioners., Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Nicola T. Hanna, for Petitioner Cathy Lexin., Coughlan, Semmer & Lipman, R.J. Coughlan, Jr., and Earll M. Pott, for Petitioner Ronald Lee Saathoff., Steven J. Carroll, Public Defender, and Greg S. Maizlish, Deputy Public Defender, for Petitioner John Anthony Torres., Hahn & Adema and David A. Hahn, for Petitioner Mary Elizabeth Vattimo., Law Office of Frank T. Vecchione and Frank T. Vecchione, for Petitioner Teresa Aja Webster., Damiani Law Group and Lisa J. Damiani, for Petitioner Sharon Kay Wilkinson., Jennifer B. Henning, upon request of the Court of Appeal, and Daniel S. Hentschke, for California State Association of Counties, League of California Cities and Association of California Water Agencies as Amici Curiae on behalf of Petitioners., Klausner & Kaufman, Robert D. Klausner and Adam P. Levinson, for National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Petitioners., Schwartz, Steinsapir, Dohrmann & Sommers, Robert M. Dohrmann and Henry M. Willis, for Local 18, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Petitioners., Reed Smith, Harvey L. Leiderman and Jeffrey R. Rieger, for Board of Retirement of the Contra Costa County Employees' Retirement Association and Board of Retirement of the Orange County Employees' Retirement System as Amici Curiae on behalf of Petitioners., Steefel, Levitt & Weiss, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, Ashley K. Dunning, Amy B. Briggs and Kelly R. Knudson, for Los Angeles County Employees' Retirement Association, Los Angeles City Employees; Retirement System, Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension System, Los Angeles Water and Power Employees Retirement Plan, Alameda County Employees' Retirement Association, Kern County Employees' Retirement Association, Marin County Employees' Retirement Association, Merced County Employees' Retirement Association, Sacramento County Employees' Retirement Association, San Bernardino County Employees' Retirement Association, San Mateo County Employees' Retirement Association, Sonoma County Employees' Retirement Association, Stanislaus County Employees' Retirement Association, Ventura County Employees' Retirement Association, California Public Employees' Retirement System and California State Teachers' Retirement System as Amici Curiae on behalf of Petitioners., Tosdal, Smith, Steiner & Wax, Ann M. Smith and Fern M. Steiner, for San Diego Municipal Employees Association, Deputy Sheriffs' Association of San Diego County, SEIU Local 221, Teamsters Local 542 and Teamsters Local 952 as Amici Curiae on behalf of Petitioners., Robert E. Lindquist, Alice O'Brien, Rosalind D. Wolf, Michael D. Hersh, John F. Kohn and Brenda Sutton-Wills, for California Teachers Association as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Petitioners., Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Christopher E. Krueger, Assistant Attorney General, Stephen P. Acquisto and Mark R. Beckington, Deputy Attorneys General, for California Public Employees' Retirement System as Amici Curiae on behalf of Petitioners., Bonnie M. Dumanis, District Attorney, Stephen R. Robinson, Craig E. Fisher and William J. La Fond, Deputy District Attorneys, for Real Party in Interest.


• For Appellees:
  
• No appearance for Respondent.