I got in touch with my attorney. It wasn't anything pressing; I'm done with the criminal case, FINALLY, and she's good about telling me if there's anything I need to know about the civil suit or anything else. I thought it would be a good thing to do, and I also like her on a personal level.
Hooking up with her wasn't easy. I'd email her, and then there would be a couple of days before I'd hear, and I was caught between wanting to see her and not wanting to see her. Indefiniton is more stressful than actually knowing, sometimes. We figured out what was going on about an hour before I saw her. C. and I were working on my new belt when she called. I ran around changing clothes and generally being nervous.
She came to pick me up after fighting traffic for a long time. A lot of my nerves evaporated when she showed up. Seeing her let me remember how much I like her, and how much of the stress is really just about being in court. Then we went to get japanese food, and she told me what's going on with my case in between talking about what her kids are up to and asking how things are going for me at home.
First off, my codefendant Sarah was released from house arrest a couple of months ago, as engineered by my attorney. I'm pretty relieved; last I'd heard, she was pretty depressed and freaked out about it.
Next, the whole point of this entry, which is what's going on with my civil suit. The suit itself was filed last April, before the statute of limitations expired in May. Recently, Long Beach has actually started processing it or something, and some funny things are happening with it.
The city of Long Beach has turned the suit over to their city attorneys, rather than hiring the case out to someone good. This is unusual, and there might be a conflict of interests having to do with my criminal suit. I'm not clear on how this works, so I'm skipping to the next part.
Typically, when police are being sued, the city will forward the filing to them. This time the city refused, telling my attorneys that they need to get the filing to each of the over 200 cops we're suing. Since the addresses of police officers are normally not published for obvious reasons, my attorneys requested the city provide them with the addresses they didn't have. The city was supposed to turn these over by the 30th. They haven't done it yet.
Further, the normal process for civil cases is that the plaintiff files a complaint, the defendant talks to them to see if they can resolve their differences, and then files a countermotion. The city attorney filed her motion to dismiss without talking to my attorneys at all. When they called her, she said she'd done it because she didn't think they could come to an agreement. Apparently her motion was half normal and half ridiculous. I didn't get details, but it looks like the city isn't making any more sense than they were over my criminal case.