LAX's revamped international terminal debuts on a smaller scale

Over in one corner is a replica of the Wright Brothers' 1903 Flyer, the world's first piloted powered aircraft. Elsewhere in the former Santa Monica Airport hangar are a 1929 Lockheed Vega and a 1939 Howard DGA-15.

But the newest feature at Santa Monica's Museum of Flying takes aim at the future of airline service — what is coming in the next few months to nearby Los Angeles International Airport, and also what airports everywhere could look like 150 years from now.

A detailed, 24-foot scale model of the $1.5-billion makeover of LAX's Tom Bradley International Terminal will be displayed at the museum through Aug. 25 as part of an exhibition called Now Boarding: Fentress Airports + The Architecture of Flight.

Airport architect Curtis W. Fentress and his Denver-based firm designed the enlarged Bradley International Terminal, which is expected to be open to the public in June for viewing. Once it's in operation in August it will be open only to ticketed passengers.

Fentress, who shot to fame when his Denver International Airport opened in 1995, is known for architectural touches that reflect local geography or culture. Denver's fabric-topped terminals mimic the snow-capped Rockies that form the airport's backdrop. "Some people describe them as tepees — we call them mountains," he said with a laugh.

His new LAX terminal features a roofline that resembles an ocean wave over its 16 new Fentress-designed passenger gates, eight of them large enough to handle fully loaded double-decker Airbus A380s. These plus two retrofitted gates were designed to move 4,000 arriving travelers an hour, with 80 passport control stations to get arriving passengers through the airport in 20 or 25 minutes instead of the 2 1/2 hours it now takes, he said.

The interior will be flooded with natural light scooped up by the large swooping roof waves that peak about 60 to 100 feet high, Fentress said. A large central area called the Great Hall will feature 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space managed by Westfield.

The Now Boarding displays also include depictions of other airports Fentress' firm has designed, including the highly acclaimed 2001 Incheon Airport in South Korea. For several years in a row it was rated the world's best airport by Airports Council International.

The exhibit also explores how passenger planes in the future could have wings that fold so they take up less space after they land and how vertical airports could accommodate hovercraft-type vehicles that land in beehive structures in the year 2160. There's also a display of flight attendant uniforms over the years.

Fentress' 24-foot model is made from acrylics, 3-D prints and foam. It was created by six people who worked full-time for four months and was displayed in Denver and Amsterdam before coming to Los Angeles. The model will to travel to Shanghai, Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, N.C. Fentress, the son of tobacco sharecroppers, was born in Greensboro, N.C.

The terminal display is part of the Museum of Flying exhibit because it is too big to be safely shown at the existing Bradley Terminal, said Gina Marie Lindsey, executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, the city's airport agency. A smaller model is also on display at the Flight Path Learning Center and Museum at 6661 W. Imperial Highway.

The displays are informative because the graceful outline of the new Bradley Terminal will be visible to most passengers only through the window of an airplane.

Lindsey said officials are still wrestling with the future redesign of other LAX terminals. But the expanded Bradley Terminal "is setting a tone for design elements we want all the terminals to embrace. That doesn't mean every terminal will have a wave roof. But the qualities of air, light and verticality need to be built into the design guidelines as we move forward," she said.

The 1.5-million-square-foot Bradley Terminal will feature about 5,000 windows, according to Fentress' designers. "I think window cleaner is a wise investment," Lindsey joked.

Daniel J. Ryan, managing director of the nonprofit Museum of Flying, said Now Boarding will be formally launched at a private event Wednesday night and then will be opened to the public. The museum is at 3100 Airport Ave. and is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $10 for adults, he said.

bob.pool@latimes.com

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USDA launches probe of L.A. kosher market

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched an investigation into the Doheny Glatt Kosher meat market as controversy brews over the integrity of products sold there.

The owner of Doheny, Michael Engelman, faces accusations of selling meat that was not properly certified under kosher rules. Last week, a council of rabbis pulled Doheny's kosher certification and, in a statement Friday, raised the possibility of "legal action."

Tuesday, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service confirmed that the Doheny market is under investigation, adding yet another item to its mounting pile of problems. Officials declined to provide additional details because the investigation is ongoing.

Eric Agaki, a private investigator whose video recordings ignited the kosher meat controversy, said he met with USDA investigators March 25 and gave them materials he had collected during his own investigation. Though the exact nature of the USDA's investigation was not clear, Agaki said investigators told him that USDA boxes are not supposed to be repacked.

The is not the first time a secular agency has stepped in during a kosher meat crisis in Los Angeles.

In 1990, Emes Kosher Meats had its kosher certificate suspended by the same council of rabbis that yanked Doheny's. At the time, Emes was the biggest kosher retailer in Los Angeles.

The scandal forced the market to close for months, before reopening and then closing again. In the wake of the scandal, the Rabbinical Council of California toughened rules governing the eligibility of butchers for kosher certification and expanded their inspections.

County officials also stepped up their monitoring of records kept by kosher butcher shops and investigated whether the practice of mixing kosher and non-kosher meat was widespread.

Like Doheny, Emes Kosher attracted many customers because of its wide variety and low prices.

More than two decades later, the current allegations have roiled L.A.'s Jewish community again. Some alarmed passersby ripped into the store and its owner as they walked past the reopened store on Friday. Other longtime Doheny customers returned after hearing that the market got a new kosher certification from local rabbis.

Some supporters said they believed Engelman had been set up by other distributors who grew frustrated by his success. They labeled the Rabbinical Council as politically motivated.

Tuesday was the last day of Passover, and phone calls to the council were not immediately returned. But in an interview with The Times, Agaki flatly denied those rumors, saying his probe of Doheny Glatt Kosher meat market "felt like the right thing to do."

"How can anybody set them up?" Agaki said of Engelman and his associates. "They did what they did. Nobody made them do it.

"Nobody hired me, nobody paid me," he continued. "If anybody wants to pay me and send me donations, I'm glad to accept them."

Agaki said his investigation into Doheny began about seven months ago when he was approached by a local rabbi. The rabbi told him some community members were frustrated because Doheny was selling meat "way too cheap" and "putting a lot of people out of business."

Video recordings released to KTLA purport to show one of Engelman's associates at an unsupervised warehouse in Reseda in early March loading his car with boxes that once held glatt kosher meat, but that were allegedly repacked with other meat. The associate transfers them to Engelman at a McDonald's, Agaki said, and Engelman unloads the boxes at his market when the overseer is absent.

Agaki, who is Jewish, said he had no relationship with Engelman prior to the start of the investigation. But he said that during his investigation, it became clear that "a lot of distributors had problems with Doheny."

Kosher meat is considerably more expensive than meat sold in a regular supermarket because of the extra supervision and inspections required. Mixing glatt kosher meat, which meets the highest kosher standards, with non-kosher meat or even kosher meat of a lesser quality could help drive down prices if it was falsely advertised.

"A lot of people wanted to see Doheny go down," Agaki said.

A Los Angeles man filed a class action lawsuit against the market and its owner Tuesday, seeking unspecified damages and alleging fraud, false advertising and other charges. Joshua Fard, 30, of Beverly Hills, has three children and said he and his family bought meat from Doheny on a quarterly basis. The market serves patrons in the heavily Orthodox Jewish Pico-Robertson district.

"This is a deeply held religious belief that he has," Fard's attorney Raymond Zolekhian said. "He and his family keep a strictly kosher home."

Engelman was not present Friday when The Times visited the market.

matt.stevens@latimes.com

Times staff writer Kate Mather contributed to this report.

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Wendy Greuel vows independence from union backers

Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Wendy Greuel promised Tuesday to govern as an independent "business-labor" leader who will stand up to the unions backing her campaign, at the same time she accused her chief rival of demonizing the city's "working people."

Greuel's remarks came in a UCLA speech delivered shortly after Kevin James, a Republican who finished third in the mayoral primary, endorsed her opponent, Eric Garcetti. James said he decided to back the Hollywood-area councilman because of his "willingness to go toe-to-toe" with city employee unions, and James' concerns about "the way labor has lined up" behind Greuel's effort.

Greuel, the city controller, rebuffed the suggestion that she would be soft on employee unions. She said she would "not shy away from telling my friends in labor that the city is going broke and cannot sustain" current retirement benefits.

"There will have to be more sacrifice for the long-term health of our city. And that means current workers — not just future workers — including [Department of Water and Power] employees," Greuel said, alluding to the union that has spent the most money to boost her campaign. "We can't keep kicking the can down the road like my opponent and the City Council did."

Garcetti, she asserted, has failed to demonstrate he has the mettle to make difficult budget decisions and avoid paralysis in a city that has struggled to pay its bills.

She charged that her opponent had maligned the labor groups supporting her, and that the media, as well as Garcetti and the political establishment, have had "a hard time dealing with the fact" that she has attracted support from both business and labor groups.

"My opponent seems to think I should apologize for having earned the support of working people," she said. "When he's not out pandering to them for their endorsement, Garcetti throws the word 'union' around like it's a slur, and has even called L.A.'s working people 'power brokers.' "

She said she would not apologize for securing backing from workers or "the support of businesses, large and small."

The dual messages underscored a fundamental challenge Greuel faces in the campaign's final stretch. She aggressively and successfully courted labor in the March primary, in part by criticizing Garcetti for agreeing to city employee layoffs and partly by pledging to work with labor groups "every step of the way." In all, organized labor spent nearly $2 million on her behalf.

But that backing, much of it from city workers unions, has risked alienating fiscally conservative voters in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside, who were expected to form a bulwark of support for her campaign.

By urging Republicans to support Garcetti, James' endorsement further complicates that equation for the controller. James received about 32,000 votes in the Valley, or nearly a quarter of the ballots cast there. In the northern and western portions of the Valley, he edged ahead of Greuel in neighborhoods such as Porter Ranch and West Hills, according to a Times analysis of election results.

"With Eric Garcetti, we have an opportunity to provide a business-friendly city again," James said as he announced his endorsement on the steps of the historic City Hall in Van Nuys. "We have a candidate that has demonstrated a willingness to go toe-to-toe with some of the powerful interests that have had too much control over City Hall for too long and also to run the city in a more efficient way. Those are all things that Republicans, that conservatives that I know care about.

"They can make a difference in this race. My intent, my goal in the next 49 days, is to deliver them."

Garcetti now has the backing of every major mayoral candidate eliminated in the first round of voting in March.

Greuel briefly acknowledged James' announcement during her speech, noting all of her primary opponents "may now be on one side — but I'm on the side of a better Los Angeles."

Dismissively referring to Garcetti as "a nice guy," she said the councilman has tried to make the race about personality rather than substance. "Leadership isn't just looking good on TV," she said.

The two candidates have not offered much detail on how they would address employee pension costs that are contributing to large budget deficits.

But on Tuesday, Greuel did offer new belt-tightening proposals, including cutting the office budgets for the mayor and City Council members by 25%.

Greuel said she chose UCLA, her alma mater, for what was billed as a key speech because it's a place "where people care about policy, not personality."

"We have seven weeks to ignite voters to care," she said. "Do they want a fighter — a doer — as mayor? Or do they want someone who is good at the handshakes, but who won't stand by his work or his commitments?"

Garcetti criticized Greuel on Tuesday for issuing audits that netted limited savings and for a recent shake-up in her campaign leadership.

"This race is about something important, that it isn't enough just to identify [problems], you have to have a proven track record of solving them," he said. "You can argue about statistics till you're blue in the face, you can reboot your campaign as many times as you want, but we're running on results, we're running on real support and we're running on a vision to move Los Angeles forward."

Asked what more she would do to reduce the city's budget shortfall, estimated to be as much as $165 million, Greuel said cutting the budgets of the mayor and City Council was simply "a flavor" of new policy proposals that she would roll out in coming weeks.

maeve.reston@latimes.com

seema.mehta@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ben Welsh contributed to this report.

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Rizzo aide seeks separate trial in Bell corruption case

With former Bell city manager Robert Rizzo's trial slated to begin in September, his assistant now wants a separate hearing and may join her ex-boss in asking that the case be moved out of Los Angeles.

Rizzo and Angela Spaccia were ordered to appear Sept. 9 on multiple public-corruption-related charges, but whether the trial takes place in Los Angeles or elsewhere — and whether the two are even tried together — remains to be seen.

Spaccia's attorney, Harlan Braun, said he will ask that his client's trial be "severed" from Rizzo's.

"She is going to be tainted by association with Rizzo," Braun explained outside court.

Spaccia's defense will be to blame Rizzo, "so how can he get a fair trial?" Braun asked.

James Spertus, Rizzo's attorney, has already said he believes that his client should be judged by a jury outside the Los Angeles Times' circulation area. The Times revealed the enormous salaries that Rizzo and others in the small, working-class city were drawing.

Braun was also critical of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy's handling of the case so far. "I think she is very prejudiced against us," Braun said. "If this is not a change of venue, what is?"

Max Huntsman, the deputy district attorney who will prosecute the case, said he has handled high-profile political corruption trials before and he believes an impartial jury can be found in Los Angeles.

Judge Kennedy last month oversaw the trial in downtown L.A. in which five former Bell council members were convicted on multiple corruption-related charges. A sixth former council member was acquitted.

During that trial, defense attorneys heaped all blame on Rizzo, who was fired in 2010 when his near-$800,000 salary and generous benefits package were revealed.

During the four-week trial of former council members, defendants and attorneys described Rizzo as a controlling, forceful and vengeful manager who used the high salaries received by the council members as a way to keep city leaders in check.

But how the jury's verdict — a mixed bag of convictions and acquittals — translates for Rizzo and Spaccia, is hard to predict.

Dmitry Gorin, a former prosecutor, said Spaccia may fare better with a jury if her trial is separated from Rizzo's but, at the same time, having Rizzo in the room may make it easier to blame him.

richard.winton@latimes.com

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

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State artifacts collection had everything — but a home

SACRAMENTO — Almost three decades ago, as heavy rain threatened to breach the levees protecting the Sacramento area, the state parks department urgently dispatched workers to warehouses holding some of California's most important heirlooms — gold-mining tools, pioneer pottery, antique rifles.

They were prepared to load the objects onto trucks and drive them to safety if disaster struck. As luck would have it, the levees held. But despite that scare, the state left much of its collection in those aging warehouses in the West Sacramento flood plain, where it has languished without adequate protection from heat and humidity.

"It's totally unacceptable," said Ross McGuire, a state museum curator.

PHOTOS: State parks artifacts

The state has at least 2 million artifacts, and roughly half are in the West Sacramento warehouses. This year they will find a new home in a relic of the Cold War.

Over the next three months, officials plan to finish moving everything to a cavernous building at the former McClellan Air Force Base north of Sacramento. There, McGuire said, thick concrete walls built to withstand a nearby nuclear blast will provide stronger protection at a cheaper price. The building is already starting to resemble the warehouse from the final scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," with boxes upon boxes lined up along shelves reaching toward the ceiling.

The Department of Parks and Recreation is better known as the guardian of the state's forests and beaches. But it has also been a voracious collector of California relics — so voracious, in fact, that the state packed its warehouses to the brim with more artifacts than it knows what to do with.

The overwhelming size and substandard storage of the collection was cited last week by the Little Hoover Commission in a report detailing problems at the parks department, which has suffered scandals and financial problems in the last year.

Stashed away are dug-out canoes made from redwoods along California's northern coast, the wedding dress worn by a surviving member of the doomed Donner party and one of the country's most important collections of Native American baskets.

In the words of one former parks official, the department is the state's attic.

Take, for example, a life-sized portrait of John Sutter, a pioneer who played a crucial role in California's Gold Rush. The painting hung in the Capitol until renovations in the 1970s and '80s. Suddenly homeless, it was eventually taken to West Sacramento, where its gilded frame brings a touch of splendor to a drab warehouse interior.

"Nobody wants to throw that away yet," McGuire said. "It's an important historical piece. It will have a future."

Roughly 20% of the state's collection is on display across California, he said. (That's better than the typical museum, McGuire said, which usually displays 10%.)

Wendy Teeter, curator of archeology at UCLA's Fowler Museum, said the state's artifacts are an invaluable resource.

"There's a million stories being told throughout the state right now and a million stories left to be told," she said. "If you don't take care of that material, you don't have a way to tell the story."

Teeter said the state's decision to shift its storage to McClellan is exciting, not just because the artifacts will have better protection. It's an opportunity for rediscovery, she said, much like when someone finds long-lost possessions behind the couch while switching apartments.

"When you move, new objects come to light that may have been squirreled away," she said.

In fact, the state is in the midst of an extensive effort to catalog all of its holdings. Employees jot down details on sheets of paper all over the West Sacramento warehouse, then put the information into a central computer system, McGuire said.

Because the state began scooping up historical items in the late 19th century, there's a lot to sift through. The nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission, which advises lawmakers on policy issues, said the collection has become unwieldy, echoing its concern that the state expanded its network of parkland beyond its capacity to manage.

Blaine Lamb, the former parks official who referred to the department as the state's attic, told the commission that "the department had accepted too many artifacts that had no relevance to the state park system or its mission and that it had neither the staff nor the space to care for such an expanding accumulation."

The state is trying to thin its collection without haphazardly kicking anything to the curb. The department has limited new acquisitions, and McGuire said at least a thousand pieces have been handed over to local historical societies and educational institutes. He has only a small staff to manage the state's central storage of artifacts and the move to McClellan. There are three full-time employees, including himself, plus eight seasonal workers and about 25 students.

One part of the building at McClellan resembles a 19th century garage, with Gov. Leland Stanford's stagecoach and a horse-drawn hearse that played a key role in California history during the Civil War. Union supporters used the hearse to smuggle a cannon into Volcano, a town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and win a standoff with Confederate sympathizers who wanted to seize gold there.

When the state is fully settled in the new building, its cache of 4,500 Native American baskets will occupy a series of shelves stretching a full mile. Many of the baskets include intricate details, achieved through the use of different colored grasses, roots and feathers. The Oakland Museum recently commissioned a weaver to create a similar basket — it took her more than two years.

"If we didn't keep this together, this knowledge would be lost," McGuire said. "This is knowledge. This is heritage."

chris.megerian@latimes.com

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Gov. Brown's Easter gift: 65 pardons

By Paige St. John, Los Angeles Times

April 1, 2013

Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday continued a pattern of pardons tied to Christian religious days, granting clemency to 65 convicted criminals, including a Los Angeles man who spent 15 years in prison for a 1977 murder conviction.

Brown's pardon of Robert Phillip Brown provided no details of the ex-convict's crime, nor his case for clemency, other than to say the man had obtained a Superior Court order last year testifying that since release from prison, "he has lived an honest and upright life, exhibited good moral character and conducted himself as a law-abiding citizen."

The governor also gave clemency to Francisco Nunes, who served two years in prison for a 1996 involuntary manslaughter conviction in San Diego County, and James Vercillino, convicted of vehicular manslaughter in 1987 in Santa Clara County.

The remaining pardons involve drug-related convictions.

A pardon is a restoration of rights, including employment in licensed occupations that preclude felons.

Brown granted 128 pardons in 2012, up from 21 his first year in office, and surpassing the 16 pardons and 10 commuted sentences that his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed in seven years in office. Seventy-nine of Brown's 2012 pardons were announced on Christmas Eve. Saturday's press release announcing the latest batch of pardons tied them to "the eve of Easter."

As a young man, Brown spent four years in a Jesuit seminary studying to be a Catholic priest.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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For the record

"G.I. Joe": An article in the March 30 Calendar section about Jon Chu, director of the movie "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," reported the film's production budget as $185 million. According to Paramount Pictures, the studio that released the film, its production budget was $130 million.

Renee Taylor: A profile of actress Renee Taylor in the March 27 Calendar section misstated the title of her dating website as http://www.boomerdating.com. The correct title is http://www.boomerpremierdating.com.

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Law school graduates aren't finding much on the employment docket

SAN FRANCISCO — Michael D. Lieberman decided to enroll at Southwestern Law School after reading that 97% of its graduates were employed within nine months. He graduated in 2009, passed the bar on his first try but could not find a job as a lawyer. He worked for a while as a software tester, then a technical writer, and now serves as a field representative for an elected official.

Lieberman, who earned his undergraduate degree at UC San Diego, is one of dozens of law graduates across the country who have joined class-action lawsuits, alleging that law schools lured them in with misleading reports of their graduates' success.

Instead of working in the law, some of the graduates were toiling at hourly jobs in department stores and restaurants and struggling to pay back more than $100,000 in loans used to finance their education. Others were in temporary or part-time legal positions.

Although Lieberman believes his degree may still be a "useful tool," he and other graduates said the suit was intended to combat "systemic, ongoing fraud prevalent in the legal education industry" that could "leave a generation of law students in dire financial straits," according to the complaint.

Nearly 20 lawsuits — five of them against California schools — are being litigated at a time of dim employment prospects for lawyers. Much of the work once done by lawyers can now be done more quickly by computers.

Online services have made law libraries largely unnecessary, allowing corporations to do more work in-house. Software has sped the hunt for information needed in discovery and other legal tasks, and Web-based companies offer litigants legal documents and help in filling them out. Even after the economy improves, some experts believe the supply of lawyers will outstrip jobs for years to come.

Although lawyer gluts come and go, "I don't think any of them rival the situation we are seeing today," said Joseph Dunn, chief executive of the State Bar of California, which regulates the state's 230,000 attorneys. "The legal community in all 50 states is being dramatically impacted."

New and inexperienced lawyers, unable to find jobs at law firms, are opening private practices, potentially putting clients at risk, according to a California bar report issued in February. To confront "serious issues of public protection," a bar task force has recommended requiring practical experience as a condition of a license. The California Supreme Court would eventually have to approve the new rules.

Legal job hunt

Here are percentages of California law school graduates in 2011 who had found full-time, long-term jobs as lawyers nine months after graduation:

School	Percentage (%)
Stanford	91.1
UC Berkeley	80.0
USC	64.7
UCLA	61.3
UC Davis	56.4
U. of San Diego	46.9
UC Hastings	46.5
McGeorge	43.6
Santa Clara	42.9
Pepperdine	42.8
Loyola Marymount	42.7
Chapman	40.1
Calif. Western	39.3
Southwestern	34.6
U. of San Francisco	34.2
La Verne	32.8
Western State	32.2
Thomas Jefferson	26.7
Golden Gate	22.0
Whittier College	17.1

Source: American Bar Assn.

Graphics reporting by Scott J. Wilson

Besides Southwestern, alumni have sued San Francisco's Golden Gate University, the University of San Francisco and San Diego's Thomas Jefferson and California Western schools of law. Each school charges about $40,000 a year in tuition.

J.R. Parker, a lead lawyer in four of the California cases, said graduate jobs included "literally folding shirts in Macy's."

Parker said he found it "galling" that the schools gathered data that showed graduates were ending up in non-legal jobs but omitted that information from what they disclosed to the public — a contention that is in dispute. Job data are a highly influential factor in law school rankings. The suits allege the schools also inflated their graduate earnings, reporting the results of only a carefully selected sample.

Michael C. Sullivan, a lawyer representing the schools, said they provided employment data the same way as other law schools, publishing the figures they were required to report to the American Bar Assn. The ABA has since changed the requirements so that law schools now must disclose how many of their graduates were in jobs that required a law degree or for which one was preferred.

Once complaints reached the ABA, the schools began breaking down the job categories for its graduates. Suddenly, the outlook for prospective students looked less promising.

In advance of the ABA rule changes, Southwestern reported in 2011 that only 52% of the previous year's graduating class had obtained full-time, permanent jobs for which a law degree was needed or preferred, and that salary figures were based on only 19% of the class, according to the suit.

Sullivan said some law graduates may make only limited job searches. A Thomas Jefferson graduate who sued had turned down a $60,000 law job because she didn't want to make a long drive for training, he said.

"What I find most ironic is that those individuals advertised themselves to law schools as great critical thinkers," Sullivan said of the law-grads-turned-litigants. "Now they say they never considered the possibility that employment might include part-time jobs."

A total of 18 law schools around the country have been sued, and courts in other states have dismissed at least five of the suits, according to Sullivan. In California, which has strong consumer laws, courts have been more receptive. California judges have permitted three of the suits to proceed; two have not yet been heard.

The suits' success may depend on whether courts decide they should proceed as class actions on behalf of all graduates, rather than the named plaintiffs. They are modeled loosely after a wave of suits against trade and technical schools for allegedly misleading students about the value of their degrees.

"These cases are not easy to bring," said Ray Gallo, who filed and settled a class action for $40 million against the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and is consulting in the Thomas Jefferson suit. The law school cases may even be more challenging because "these are by and large higher-quality institutions than these trade schools," he said.

Already, the scarcity of legal jobs has caused law school applications to plunge. A national study of 2011 law graduates found that only 55% of them had law-related jobs nine months after graduation. Some experts believe bottom-tier law schools will be forced out of business and that even the prestigious schools will begin to limit the sizes of their incoming classes.

Indiana University law professor William D. Henderson, citing census data, said law office jobs peaked in 2004. There were 50,000 more jobs that year than in 2010, he said.

At the same time, some legal services are being outsourced to such places as India, and Internet-based companies are offering consumers relatively inexpensive help navigating litigation.

Still, not everyone shares the dismal outlook. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Irvine Law School, said his students are finding full-time jobs as lawyers even during this slow economy.

"It is not the same across all law schools when you look at employment prospects," he said.

Rudy Hasl, dean of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, said the retirement of baby boomers also would open up jobs.

Both deans said there was huge unmet demand for legal services for the poor and middle class, and the next generation of practitioners might be able to fill that demand. The state bar agrees.

"Across the country, the need for legal services among those who cannot pay or have limited ability to pay has never been higher," the bar report said.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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Suspect named in kidnap, sex assault of Northridge girl

Los Angeles police on Saturday identified a suspect in the kidnapping and sexual assault of a young Northridge girl last week as a 30-year-old transient with an extensive criminal history.

Tobias Dustin Summers, who was released from jail in January after serving six days for a probation violation, is the primary focus of the police investigation, LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said at an afternoon news conference at police headquarters downtown.

Summers has a criminal history dating back to 2002 that includes charges of kidnapping, robbery, explosives possession and petty theft, Albanese said. Summers is not a registered sex offender, but authorities said he was arrested on suspicion of battery in 2009 in a case that involved child annoyance.

He was released from custody in July 2012 because of a new law that transfers authority over some felons from state prisons to county jails and, on their release, from state parole to county probation departments. The law, also known as public safety realignment, was intended to reduce overcrowding in state prisons.

Authorities described Summers as a transient who frequents North Hollywood and other areas of the San Fernando Valley.

It was unknown why the 10-year-old victim was targeted. "We have no information that the family knew this individual or that this individual knew any members of the family," Albanese said.

The girl told investigators that two men were involved in the incident and that she was taken to multiple locations in different vehicles, according to law enforcement sources. But police said Summers was the primary focus of their investigation.

"We're trying to go through this slowly and methodically because we don't want to overwhelm her. She's a 10-year-old girl," LAPD Capt. William P. Hayes said after Saturday's news conference.

On Wednesday, the girl's mother told authorities she last saw her daughter in her room about 1 a.m. About 3:40 a.m., police said, the mother heard a noise. When she went to check on her daughter, the girl was gone.

Police conducted a house-by-house search of the neighborhood, and the FBI joined the investigation. Shortly before 3 p.m., a man spotted the girl in a parking lot about six miles from her home and pointed her in the direction of nearby police.

She was found with cuts and bruises, some to her face, near a Starbucks. In news helicopter footage, she appeared to be barefoot and wearing clothing different from what she had on when she was last seen.

LAPD officials said they believe the girl was dropped off at a Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Woodland Hills. She then walked toward the Starbucks.

The girl was initially identified by The Times, citing authorities, after she went missing. However, it is the policy of The Times not to identify victims in cases of alleged sexual crimes.

Albanese said Summers had been taken into custody Jan. 13 for a probation violation and was released Jan. 16. He did not elaborate on the violation.

Law enforcement sources have said detectives were trying to determine whether there was any connection between this case and a high-profile international child abduction in 2008. Public records and court documents indicated that one of the children kidnapped in the 2008 case was a relative of the Northridge girl.

But police said Saturday that so far there is no clear connection.

More than 40 detectives and the FBI are working on the Northridge case, authorities said, and anyone who sees Summers should call 911 or the anonymous tip line (800) 222-8477.

rosanna.xia@latimes.com

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Town hopes for jobs tapping California's huge oil formation

TAFT, Calif. — This two-stoplight town was built on petroleum, and residents here never miss a chance to pay tribute.

A 38-foot monument to wildcatters stands downtown; locals brag it's the tallest bronze sculpture west of the Mississippi. Every five years, the city throws an "Oildorado" festival. There's even a beauty pageant in which young women dubbed "the maids of petroleum" vie to be crowned queen.

It's all an homage to the bustling days when Taft boasted two giant oil fields and Standard Oil Co. of California was headquartered there. The oil giant left in 1968, jobs dried up, and today the Kern County town is saddled with high unemployment and memories of past glory days.

That could be about to change.

Residents are betting on a second boom from oil trapped miles underground in dense rock formations. It's part of what's called the Monterey Shale, where oil deposits span 1,750 square miles through Southern and Central California.

"Everyone and their dog would be working if they find that oil," said Joe Gonzalez, 53, who began toiling in the oil fields around Taft three decades ago as a roustabout. "It's a huge deal for Taft."

But a key question is: Could these modern-day wildcatters actually squeeze oil out of the rock?

Some believe technology that can reach previously inaccessible oil means it's just a matter of time; others are convinced it's an over-hyped promise.

Oil companies have begun exploring the Monterey Shale underneath towns like Taft that have survived on oil for a century.

More than 15 billion barrels of oil, or two-thirds of the continental United States' total deep-rock deposits, is estimated to be locked in the Monterey, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Extracting it could mean enormous wealth if oil prices stay around $97 a barrel, and could pump billions of dollars into the local economy.

The much smaller Bakken shale formation in North Dakota has fueled a boom that has driven unemployment in the state down to 3.3%, the nation's lowest. Taft's unemployment rate is 13.3%.

But the process is slow going.

"It's not like the old days where you put a straw into the ground, you get a gusher and you dance around," said Tupper Hull, spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn., an industry lobbying group. "It's a very complicated process."

Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum and Venoco Inc. of Denver, two of the largest stakeholders in the Monterey, have already drilled exploratory wells.

Federal land leases on the shale are going for $500 per acre at auction, up from $2 to $5 per acre just a few years ago, said Gabriel Garcia of the Bureau of Land Management's Bakersfield office.

Economists say tapping the shale would be a big boost for the Central Valley, which depends heavily on agriculture and petroleum. By 2015, California could see half a million new jobs and $4.5 billion in oil-related tax revenue, according to a USC study.

"It's not the muckety-mucks, the higher-ups, who live here," said Kathy Orrin, executive director of the Taft Chamber of Commerce. "It's the people in cowboy boots and cowboy hats and Wranglers — and they can make a good living in the oil industry."

Around noon in Taft, oil workers in dusty coveralls park trucks outside the few lunch spots in town: the OT Cookhouse & Saloon, where black-and-white photos of California's first gushers line the walls; Jo's Restaurant, where diners sit below painted oil derricks and fields; and a Tex-Mex place.

Rick McCostlin, 45, thinks jobs could come back and revive Taft. Another oil boom might even attract some of the locals who fled to better-paying gigs in North Dakota's oil fields.

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