Frank L. Shaw - Lawsuits

Lawsuits

Citizenship

A major controversy erupted after Shaw's election as mayor when Charles A. Butler, former secretary of the Eagle Rock Chamber of Commerce, filed suit, alleging that Shaw was not a citizen and therefore could not be sworn into office. It developed that Shaw's Canadian-born father had taken out his first U.S. citizenship papers in Hays City, Kansas, in 1887, but no record could be found of a final disposition. The matter was finally settled on July 24, 1933, when Shaw took the oath of allegiance to the United States, and Butler withdrew his suit.

Warner Brothers

Shaw sued Warner Brothers in October 1939 for $1 million in damages, alleging he was defamed in The Man Who Dared, a motion picture supposedly based on the January 14, 1938, bombing of private investigator Harry Raymond while he was sitting in his automobile in the garage of his Los Angeles home. Shaw said the plot "contains a chain of circumstances which leaves the unmistakeable impression" that it was a "fictionalized version of the Raymond bombing." He said the film depicts him, Shaw, as having ordered his police aides to plant the bomb that severely injured a private investigator named Harry. The studio replied that the events were fictional and could have happened in any American city. The suit was settled out of court in February 1941, with both sides agreeing there would be no statement as to the terms.

Bombing

Raymond, the real victim of the bombing, sued Shaw and 14 other former civic leaders and police officials in June 1940. Raymond said Shaw owed him $500 from a $30,000 out-of-court settlement that had previously been reached over the incident. Shaw issued an "indignant denial" that he had ever "negotiated or paid any portion" of Raymond's suit against him.

Libel

Two 1942 lawsuits by Shaw charging Macfadden Publications and others with libel in the publication of articles in 1939 about his administration in Liberty magazine were settled out of court after the trial of one of them resulted in a hung jury. The first article, "The Lid Off Los Angeles," ran in installments beginning November 11, 1939, and included the statement:

Until the boodling Shaw machine was handed its hat and a decent and unfettered man was elected Mayor in September, 1938, the city of Los Angeles for 20 years had been, almost uninterruptedly, run by an underworld government invisible to the average citizen.

The second article was said to have been based on material furnished by the wife of anti-vice crusader Clifford Clinton under the title "My Husband's Death Struggle With the Vice Czars of Los Angeles."

At the same time the Shaw suits were settled, a claim by Clifford Clinton against Shaw was also laid to rest. Clinton had sued Shaw for libel in having claimed that he, Clinton, had taken "large sums of money from questionable sources for use in the 1938 recall campaign against Shaw." The exact terms of the settlements were not disclosed.

Oil lease

In 1951, Shaw lost a suit for damages he filed against Paul R. Ritter, a former business partner, concerning an oil lease in the Cuyama Valley in Kern County. Ritter had been Shaw's manager in the 1933 campaign for mayor and was later appointed by Shaw as president of the city's Board of Public Works.