Businessman Jailed in Ex-Wife’s Beating Files Claim

A Westlake Village businessman has filed a claim against the county after being arrested in connection with the near-fatal beating of his ex-wife.

Lee R. Mannheimer, 56, alleges that he suffered emotional trauma and a tarnished reputation as a result of his arrest on suspicion of attempted murder last fall.

Mannheimer is seeking unspecified damages against the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and officers who investigated the assault on his former wife, 48-year-old Linda Lou Morrisset.

Morrisset, who had remarried, was found beaten in the head with a blunt object in the hallway of her Santa Rosa Valley home on Sept. 12.

She was hospitalized in critical condition for several days. At one point, she awoke from a coma and identified Mannheimer as her attacker, authorities said.

But authorities say she was not able to give a full account of what happened that night.

Mannheimer was arrested Oct. 4 and held in county jail for several days. But prosecutors, citing a lack of evidence, did not file criminal charges and he was released.

Late last month, Mannheimer filed a claim against the county, the Sheriff’s Department and several members of the department for false arrest.

A claim must be submitted before a lawsuit can be filed against a government agency. The county has several weeks to respond.

Mannheimer’s claim alleges that law enforcement officers subjected him to improper searches of his property and an “ambush-style” arrest that prevented him from picking up his 9-year-old son from school.

The businessman states in the claim, filed by Pasadena attorney John Burton, that he also temporarily lost custody of his son as a result of what he calls the Sheriff’s Department’s false statements.

Meanwhile, the investigation into the attack on Morrisset is ongoing. Mannheimer remains a suspect, sheriff’s spokesman Eric Nishimoto said Wednesday.