Jury Award Is Also Payback for Saving a Friend’s Life

None of the jurors in Malibu realized it, but when they awarded James H. Bell $1.8 million on Wednesday they were also helping his lawyer, Carmen Trutanich, repay a debt--for Bell’s saving his life.

Bell, a 51-year-old former investigator for the district attorney’s office, won the judgment against two Santa Monica police officers who injured him in 1991 when they mistook him for an unemployment-check fraud suspect.

The injury ended Bell’s career as a top-level investigator who had been involved in some of Los Angeles County’s highest-profile murder cases in the 1980s.

It was during one of those cases, in 1985, that Bell saved Trutanich’s life when a carload of gang members opened fire on Trutanich at a South-Central Los Angeles murder scene.

Trutanich was a deputy district attorney on the case and was gathering evidence at Green Meadows Park. Bell dived into action as the bullets began flying. He pulled Trutanich to safety behind a low brick wall and held him down as he fired back at the gang members. They fled as Bell radioed for help. Nobody was hit.

Trutanich never forgot Bell’s heroic action.

So 10 years later, when Bell found himself needing help in a legal showdown, Trutanich came to his friend’s aid.

Bell had sued Santa Monica police and state officials over the torn shoulder rotator cuff he says he suffered when the two officers grabbed him and yanked his arms behind his back. A 1994 jury ruled against Bell but that verdict was overturned after a mistrial was declared.

By that time, Trutanich had left the district attorney’s office and was working in private practice. When he heard there would be a retrial, Trutanich volunteered his services.

With the help of former law partner Fred Blum, Trutanich took aim at the city of Santa Monica and the state, whose own investigators from the Employment and Development Department had been involved in confronting Bell.

The more he looked into the case, the angrier Trutanich says he got.

“The state had a warrant for the arrest of a man for collecting $600 in unemployment payments while he was working. They sent two investigators to arrest him at the Workers’ Compensation Court in Santa Monica when they heard the man was coming there for a hearing,” Trutanich recalled Thursday.

“They were looking for a black man. They looked inside and saw a black guy so they assumed it was their man.”

It turned out it wasn’t. It was Bell, who was in the office on an unrelated matter.

When Bell stepped out of the building, Santa Monica Police Sgt. Willard Kemp and Officer David Enriquez--who had been summoned to help the state agents--grabbed him from behind.

Bell protested that he was a peace officer. Disbelieving Santa Monica officers marched him to his nearby car, where his identification and gun were locked in the trunk.

After confirming who Bell was, Kemp apologized, Bell says. But the damage to his arms had been done.

When Bell later visited a police firing range as is required twice yearly of certified peace officers, he was unable to handle the recoil of the heavy 12-gauge shotgun that officers have to be able to shoot.

“You lose your certification, you are medically retired. I was through,” Bell said Thursday.

The incident at the Workers’ Compensation office had been “the most humiliating experience of my life,” Bell said. The end of his nearly 12-year career as a district attorney’s investigator was the most crushing.

During the six-week Superior Court trial in Malibu, Trutanich produced evidence that the state investigators had a photograph of the man they were looking for but didn’t show it to the Santa Monica officers. Instead, one of the state agents allegedly said, “That’s him!” when Bell walked out of the building.

Lawyers for Santa Monica suggested that Bell was not injured by police and, burned out by the stress of his office work, was looking for a way out of his job.

On Thursday, Deputy City Atty. Anthony Serritella said his office is reviewing the case before deciding whether to appeal the verdict.

“We think the award was excessive. The City of Santa Monica officers were there to assist the state EED investigators. But ironically it was the Santa Monica officers and the city that were held liable and not the state,” Serritella said.

“The real victims of the misidentification that day are the two Santa Monica officers.”

Bell disagrees.

“I think the most devastating thing in my mind was that other police officers would behave that way,” he said.

Bell said Wednesday’s verdict was just one more piece of evidence that his life is finally turning around after the 1991 incident. He recently landed a job doing employment background checks for the Los Angeles Fire Department. He isn’t required to use firearms.

“Jim loves investigative work,” said Trutanich, who is taking a reduced fee. “It took a long time to adjust to the fact his career was snatched away by somebody who is supposed to watch his back.

“This trial was truly a vindication of his spirit.”