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Melina Abdullah, Cal State LA professor and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles chapter. | Photo courtesy of Cal State LA
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Two Black Lives Matter members are seeking to block lawyers for former Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey and her husband, David Lacey, from obtaining some of their medical records in a lawsuit filed after David Lacey allegedly pointed a gun at demonstrators outside the family home in 2020.
The confrontation occurred when members of the group showed up at the couple’s Granada Hills home early on the morning of March, 2, 2020. Melina Abdullah, Dahlia Ferlito and Justin Marks brought the complaint against the County’s former top prosecutor and her husband in October of that year, claiming they suffered emotional distress from the incident.
In papers filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the plaintiffs’ attorneys are seeking to quash subpoenas for the medical records of Abdullah from marriage and family therapist Monica Ellison and those of Marks from Kaiser Permanente and Hathaway-Sycamores Child and Family Services. A hearing is scheduled Oct. 4 before Judge Theresa Traber.
The subpoenas seek “any and all documents and communications regarding medical treatment plaintiffs received from January 1, 2020 to the present, regardless of whether (the) documents and other information relate to the incident or not,” according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers court papers.
The documents sought by the Lacey attorneys “are not directly relevant to having no tendency to prove or disprove any claim or defense in this action,” according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers’ court papers, which further state that the subpoenas “violate plaintiffs’ right to privacy guaranteed by the U.S. and California Constitutions.”
Abdullah is a professor and former chair of the Department of Pan-African Studies at Cal State Los Angeles and a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. She and other BLM demonstrators went to the Laceys’ home seeking to confront the DA for refusing to meet with them to discuss issues of community concern.
Jackie Lacey was criticized by activists for declining to prosecute some law enforcement officers involved in fatal on-duty shootings during her two terms in office.
David Lacey opened the door after the plaintiffs rang the bell and video images show him pointing a gun and saying he would shoot if the visitors did not get off his porch.
The encounter occurred a day before Jackie Lacey — the first woman and first Black prosecutor to hold the top post since the office was created in 1850 — was forced into a runoff with former San Francisco County District Attorney George Gascón, who ultimately was elected.
She later apologized on behalf of herself and her husband, but stressed that she has been the target of repeated threats while in office, including death threats, and said her husband acted out of fear when the commotion began outside their home at 5:30 a.m.
David Lacey was charged by the California Attorney General’s Office with three misdemeanor counts of assault with a firearm, but in May 2021 San Fernando Superior Court Judge David Stuart allowed him to enter a diversion program to resolve the case, noting that he was a “67-year-old man who has led an otherwise exemplary, productive life.”
The judge also noted that there was a “unique politically charged situation that’s unlikely to recur again.”
