Ward Opens Court Battle With Antonovich in Defamation Suit

Twelve years after Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich defeated incumbent Baxter Ward in a bitter campaign, and four years after Ward failed in his expensive comeback bid to oust Antonovich, the two longtime combatants have taken their battle to the courtroom.

Wednesday was the first day of testimony in a civil suit in which Ward accuses Antonovich of defaming him in their 1988 campaign for alleging that Ward destroyed public files before leaving office in 1980--a felony.

Ward, who denied the accusation and has never been charged with any such crime, maintains that the attack on his character cost him the 1988 election. A former TV anchorman who is acting as his own attorney, Ward is seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Meanwhile, Antonovich, who easily won reelection to a fourth term this year, calls the lawsuit sour grapes.

“Baxter Ward is trying to do in the courtroom what he couldn’t do at the ballot box,” Antonovich said Wednesday outside San Fernando Superior Court, where the trial is expected to last 10 days.

The issue that brought on the lawsuit, which was filed in 1989, focused on an allegation by Antonovich that when he took over Ward’s office in December, 1980, many of the file cabinets in the office were empty.

At least six times during the 1988 campaign, between Sept. 16 and Nov. 7, Antonovich repeated his allegation, including once during a television debate in which Antonovich said, “Mr. Ward had such contempt for constituents that he shredded and destroyed all of the files the day we came into office.”

Ward maintains that he was never aware that files were missing until Antonovich made his allegations in the campaign. Ward claims that Antonovich had plenty of opportunities during the campaign to investigate the matter and could have easily found that the charge was not true.

On Wednesday, Kathleen Crow, who served as Antonovich’s chief deputy from 1980 to 1987 and then as a campaign consultant for the 1988 race, testified that she is 100% certain that Ward must have been responsible for removal of any files. She said she is not aware of anyone seeing Ward or anyone else removing files, but reached her conclusion because only Ward and his staff members had access to the office before the new staff took over.