Los Angeles County deputies have now spent more than two years working without a contract and without a cost-of-living increase. According to the county, there is no money – and certainly no urgency – to properly compensate the men and women who put their lives on the line every single day to protect the citizens of LA County.
Yet somehow, Los Angeles County found more than $111 million to spend on lawyers in a single fiscal year.
Buried inside last Thursday’s Los Angeles County Civilian Oversight Commission agenda is a staggering figure that should command the attention of every taxpayer in the county. According to the County Counsel Litigation Cost Report for Fiscal Year 2024-25, Los Angeles County spent approximately $229.3 million on litigation expenses. Of that amount, $111.3 million went toward attorneys’ fees and legal costs. Another $118 million was spent on settlements and judgments.
Even more remarkable, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department accounted for approximately $112 million, or nearly half of all county litigation costs.
To be clear, litigation expenses are always concentrated where risk is greatest. There is no money in suing the library. Law enforcement will always represent a substantial percentage of a county’s litigation exposure.
But what has happened in Los Angeles County goes far beyond ordinary litigation risk.
The County has spent years aggressively promoting the “deputy gang” narrative by commissioning reports, holding hearings, funding investigations, and generating misleading headlines.
The consequences have been profound.
The County has effectively spent a fortune convincing potential jurors that deputies are criminal actors operating inside organized gangs. That narrative has not only increased the likelihood of litigation, it has dramatically increased the value and cost of litigation itself.
Every plaintiff’s attorney now walks into a courtroom armed with years of county-funded reports, public statements, commission hearings, and media coverage portraying deputies as members of criminal organizations.
Los Angeles County did not simply “inherit” this litigation environment.
It helped create it.
Then it hired lawyers to defend it.
A lot of lawyers.
A lot of very expensive lawyers.
And that is where the story becomes even more interesting.
As The Current Report has previously reported, one name repeatedly surfaces in high-profile litigation involving the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Robert Luna himself: Miller Barondess attorney Jason H. Tokoro.
Tokoro represented Sheriff Luna and Los Angeles County in the Benjamin Torres federal retaliation lawsuit, litigation that exposed uncomfortable questions surrounding promotions, favoritism, and internal departmental practices.
Tokoro’s reputation within legal circles is well known.
One veteran litigator familiar with his work bluntly described him as a “high-priced whore,” a characterization that, while crude, reflects the perception among some legal observers that representing government entities and politically sensitive public officials has become an extraordinarily profitable enterprise for certain private attorneys.
The issue is not the name-calling.
The issue is the staggering, taxpayer-funded legal fees being charged to Los Angeles County and, the apparent willingness of county government to keep writing the checks.
So, if the shoe fits…
While Los Angeles County spent more than $111 million on attorneys and legal costs in one year alone, taxpayers still do not have a clear public accounting identifying exactly which private firms received those dollars and in what amounts.
However, based upon the extensive litigation involving the Sheriff’s Department and the repeated appearance of Miller Barondess and Jason Tokoro in some of the County’s most significant and politically sensitive cases, it appears likely that the firm has received a substantial portion of those taxpayer-funded legal expenditures.
Campaign finance records previously published by The Current Report show that both Jason Tokoro and Miller Barondess founding partner Skip Miller donated to Sheriff Robert Luna’s campaigns and multiple Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors campaigns. The relationships become impossible to ignore when the same private attorneys and firms receiving taxpayer-funded legal work, are also financially participating in the campaign ecosystem surrounding the very politicians who oversee county government and control its budgets, contracts, and priorities.
As previously reported by The Current Report, campaign finance records and Ethics Commission filings revealed what appeared to be a network of “Skip” donor entities and corporate shells that collectively directed more than $25,000 into campaigns supporting Supervisors Holly Mitchell, Lindsey Horvath, and then-State Assemblymember Chris Holden.
The investigation identified entities that appeared to share addresses, timing, and other characteristics raising questions about whether the contributions originated from genuinely independent donors or from a coordinated network of intermediary entities.
At the very moment Los Angeles County politicians continue insisting there is no money for public safety, deputies have gone more than two years without a contract or cost-of-living increase, somehow, Los Angeles County found more than $111 million to spend on lawyers.
This is no longer simply a story about litigation.
This is a story about a taxpayer-funded legal machine that has become extraordinarily expensive, politically intertwined, and highly profitable for a select group of private attorneys and firms operating inside one of the largest county governments in America.
The money is there.
The question is where it is going, who is receiving it, and why the same names continue appearing wherever litigation, politics, campaign money, and taxpayer-funded legal contracts intersect in Los Angeles County.
