Legal Merry-Go-Round : Drug Complainant Who Became a Defendant Wins His Case

When Phill Coleman called the police four years ago to say he thought his neighbors were operating a drug laboratory in their Torrance apartment, he had no idea that he would be the one put on trial.

After a series of legal reversals, Coleman was transformed from government witness to the defendant in a lawsuit that accused him of eavesdropping and spying on his neighbors, David D. and Elizabeth C. Blanco.

And in September, Coleman was ordered to pay $25,500 in damages. Although the amount was later reduced to $8,500, Coleman nearly lost his Redondo Beach clothing store and a well-known computerized history documenting the Vietnam War when his former neighbors tried to collect the judgment.

But last week, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Harvey A. Schneider reversed his earlier verdict, overturned the damage award, and said that there was insufficient evidence to find that Coleman had spied.

“I’m very happy,” Coleman, 39, said this week. “Now I can get on with my life and get back to work.”

The Blancos could not be reached for comment, but they have steadfastly denied that they sold drugs.

Despite the four-year legal imbroglio, Coleman--an Army veteran who operates his computer library on the Vietnam War out of his store’s office--said he would call the police again if he thought his neighbors were dealing cocaine.

“It is something you just have to do,” Coleman said. “You just can’t turn your back on it. We have done that for so many years. That’s why the drug problem got to where it is. We have to get involved. We have to do something.”

Coleman’s odyssey began Sept. 4, 1985, when he said he returned home from work to find his apartment filled with the smell of ether. When he stuck his head out of his second-story window to get some fresh air, Coleman said, he heard a man downstairs say: “This is the best . . . I have ever made. We’re going to make a ton of money on it.”

Coleman said he suspected the Blancos were making cocaine or PCP and he feared that the ether could explode. So he called the Torrance Police Department.

Torrance police said they found 30 grams of cocaine, “a quantity of methamphetamine,” more than $7,000 in cash and 700 ounces of silver in the Blancos’ apartment. But charges against the couple were dismissed after a Torrance Superior Court judge ruled that police had not gotten a valid search warrant.

A year later, in September, 1986, the Blancos filed a crime report with Torrance police, claiming that Coleman had spied on them, eavesdropped and tapped their phone.

The district attorney’s office declined to file criminal charges, but the couple sued Coleman.

Judge Schneider said he awarded damages to the Blancos largely because of the testimony of Torrance Police Officer Douglas Duckson. Coleman had implied that he wiretapped the Blancos and admitted listening to other people’s telephone calls, Duckson testified, according to the judge’s written decision.

Coleman later said that Duckson must have misunderstood him.

Coleman said he told the officer he simply overheard the incriminating statement from the downstairs apartment and then tape-recorded a memo to himself so he wouldn’t forget what he heard. He never taped his neighbors, Coleman insisted.

The soft-spoken, bespectacled bachelor said he spent $13,000 defending himself and lost even more money because he had to close his shop for two weeks to attend court hearings. In late October, a marshal took inventory of the aerobics and sports clothes at his shop, in preparation for seizing merchandise to pay the judgment.

But after a hearing in which Duckson clarified his earlier testimony about illegal wiretapping, the judge reversed himself and threw out his September verdict.

Coleman has filed a claim against the Police Department. He said he plans to sue for infliction of emotional distress, because he said the department revealed his identity to the Blancos and did not help him defend himself against the spying charge. Torrance police declined to comment on the case.

Coleman said other veterans--including retired Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam--helped him through his ordeal. Levin said he took on the case at a reduced fee after Westmoreland contacted him through an intermediary.

“That’s what really saved my life,” said Coleman, who represented himself in the first trial. “I realized there were people who were just as upset with this as I was and who were willing to support me.”