Key Points

  • The Second Appellate District, Division One, treated the deputies' arguably untimely appeal as a writ petition and denied it, awarding Los Angeles County its costs.
  • The court held that the sheriff's authority to appoint, suspend and discharge employees does not imply authority to rescind or modify discipline while a Civil Service Commission appeal is pending.
  • A department manual provision, MPP section 3-04/020.80, was not shown to be a board delegation or a law conferring authority under Government Code section 23005, and County Code section 5.04.030(O) did not make it binding.
  • An alleged past practice of chiefs and captains settling discipline appeals did not bind the county because the petitioners did not show its abrogation was subject to the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act's meet-and-confer duty.
  • The unpublished 2013 Baca decision did not collaterally estop the county, and promissory estoppel could not be used to defeat the public interest in limiting who may incur liability for the county.

Los Angeles County does not have to honor settlements in which sheriff's department chiefs agreed to reinstate three fired deputies, a California appeals court ruled on Oct. 30, because the deputies never showed the chiefs had legal authority to bind the county.

A unanimous three-justice panel of the Second Appellate District, Division One, ruled against the former deputies and their union, the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. Justice Bendix wrote the published opinion, joined by Presiding Justice Rothschild and Justice Weingart.

The panel held that the sheriff's power to hire, suspend and fire deputies does not imply a power to undo discipline while a deputy's appeal is pending before the county Civil Service Commission. Reading in such a power, the court said, would undercut a civil service system built to prevent favoritism and could let department officials commit county money without approval from the Board of Supervisors.

The deputies, David Jouzi, Benjamin Alvarado and Dellanira Aragon, were discharged for alleged misconduct and appealed to the commission. In 2019, while the appeals were pending, each signed a settlement with a department chief that purported to reduce the discipline and reinstate the deputy. The county refused to comply.

The court first heard the case in 2023, when it held that the deputies had not shown the chiefs were authorized to sign the agreements but allowed them to amend. After four more amended petitions, the trial court in July 2025 sustained the county's demurrer without leave to amend, noting the deputies had "three opportunities to identify this authority."

The dispute turned on Government Code section 23005, which provides that "a county may exercise its powers only through the board of supervisors or through agents and officers acting under authority of the board or authority conferred by law." The panel rejected all four theories of authority the deputies offered.

First, the deputies argued that the power to settle disciplinary cases is implicit in the sheriff's authority to appoint, suspend and discharge employees. Justice Bendix acknowledged "the facial appeal of petitioners' position," writing that an official who imposes discipline might be expected to "have the discretion to reverse the imposition of discipline and spare the county the expense and delay of litigating the employee's appeal before the commission."

But the court found the theory at odds with a system that divides authority among the sheriff, who hires from an eligible list, the director of personnel, who maintains that list, and the commission, which hears appeals. It noted the deputies and the union had acknowledged that in 2020 a trial court granted the county's petition challenging a sheriff's attempt to reinstate a deputy discharged under a prior sheriff. "To the contrary, embracing petitioners' expansive interpretation of department officials' power would increase the risk of corruption and favoritism the civil service system was designed to avert," Justice Bendix wrote.

The court also cited the potential cost of such settlements. A county ordinance bars county counsel from settling claims for more than $20,000 without board approval, and the deputies' pleading suggested that Jouzi's settlement entitled him to back pay. The court said it "cannot conclude" that the board, in adopting rules letting the sheriff impose discipline, "intended tacitly to delegate authority to department personnel to incur financial obligations that could significantly exceed the $20,000 limitation."

Second, the court rejected reliance on a department manual provision on settling commission appeals. The deputies said department representatives negotiated it with the union and that one or more of them executed an agreement adopting it in July 2018, making it binding under a county labor ordinance. But that ordinance reaches only matters within management's exclusive jurisdiction or delegated by the board, the panel said, and the deputies showed neither.

Third, the deputies alleged that since at least 1980 captains and chiefs had settled disciplinary disputes without approval from county counsel or the board. The court said that argument assumed the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act, a state law requiring public employers to meet and confer in good faith with unions over wages, hours and other terms of employment, barred the county from ending the practice on its own. The deputies never showed that ending it met the act's threshold test under the California Supreme Court's 2006 decision in Claremont Police Officers Assn. v. City of Claremont, the court held.

Fourth, the court held that a 2013 unpublished decision, Assn. for L.A. Deputy Sheriffs v. Baca, did not collaterally estop the county. Baca upheld a 1991 settlement between the union and the department over the timing of interviews of deputies under criminal investigation. "The court thus had no occasion to address whether department chiefs may settle commission appeals without board approval," Justice Bendix wrote.

Without enforceable settlements, the claims for breach of contract, promissory estoppel and mandamus all failed. Any error on the declaratory relief claim was harmless, the panel said, and the deputies and the union forfeited any challenge to the denial of leave to amend.

The panel reached the merits only after excusing an arguably late appeal, which it treated as a petition for writ of mandate. The trial court had filed a dismissal order on the same day it directed the parties to submit a proposed judgment, which apparently "led petitioners to believe the dismissal order was issued in error," the panel said.

Lawyers for the deputies and the union included Jacob A. Kalinski of Rains Lucia Stern St. Phalle & Silver. The county was represented by Mira Hashmall of Miller Barondess.

The panel denied the petition and awarded the county its costs, leaving in place the trial court's dismissal with prejudice of the suit, which was filed in December 2019. The court did not reach the county's separate argument that the union lacked standing to seek declaratory relief.