Poof. Gone.
Late yesterday afternoon, attorney Robert McNeill Jr. left a cryptic, “angry” message on the telephone of Gerald Bennett, brother of Culver City murder victim JoAnn Crystal Harris. Mr. McNeill said their professional relationship officially was over.
There would be no urgent court hearing this morning seeking a way to presumably apply heat to the family to accept a civil suit proposed settlement that had been forcefully, repeatedly rejected. Mr. McNeil indicated he had received a substitution-of-attorney letter at his downtown Los Angeles high-rise office as a result of telling Mr. Bennett last Thursday he wanted to withdraw from the case because he thought the plaintiff, Martha Harris, should accept $400,000 as the state’s final offer. The family’s new lawyer in the civil suit against the state of California and the National Guard, accusing them of negligence in the crime, is Mario Vega.
Re-energized by new representation, the immensely determined Mr. Bennett this morning repeated a statement he has made several times: “A jury is going to be picked, and we are going in to do battle with these people (the defendants).”
Mr. Bennett said Mr. McNeill took the case on a contingency basis three years ago, not long after his sister was killed by National Guard veteran Scott Ansman at the Guard Armory in Vets Park.
Did he walk away emptyhanded? For eight days, he had been strenuously urging the hospitalized 71-year-old Mrs. Harris to embrace the last best chance to collect. He suggested it would be imprudent to refuse to settle for about $175,000 while he would take $225,000. The likely alternative, he said, was zero.
No Response
Mr. McNeill did not return telephone calls this morning and afternoon.
For more than a week, Mr. Bennett and Mr. McNeill have been verbally dueling about the offer — each equally resolute — and about Mr. McNeill’s approach to the severely ailing Mrs. Harris.
“I will tell you what I think would have happened if Mr. McNeill had gone into court as he planned to,” Mr. Bennett said. “ He would have said I was forcing my mother not to accept the settlement, that a settlement was something she wanted but the family was pressuring her into not taking it.
“That was far from the truth, as anyone could say who has seen my mother in the hospital. McNeill wanted a special hearing for the court to intervene on her behalf. With our new attorney in place, he has been substituted out.”
Mr. Bennett, the late Ms. Harris’s only brother, acknowledged that changing lawyers now, three years after the murder and hours before a jury trial was to start, “really is a hassle. The new attorney has to come in, sort out what is going on, figure out what the state’s position is. And our old attorneys do not really want to help because if our new attorney goes in and gets a higher compensation, that will make Ivie, McNeill & Wyatt look bad. They are going to play games with the new attorneys. They are going to hide paperwork. They are going to hide information and make them work really, really hard.”
Venturing a step further, Mr. Bennett said that he has filed a conduct complaints against Mr. McNeill and his associate Allison Bracy with the state bar association. “I also am looking at a (possible) malpractice suit because they were terrible in handling this case,” Mr. Bennett said.
