A schizophrenic man bused with a one-way ticket, no cash and a few-days-supply of meds from Las Vegas to Sacramento earlier this year has filed a federal class action lawsuit against the state agencies he says abandoned him and at least 1,500 other mentally ill patients. Those patients were bused to nearly every state in the nation, many to major cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose.

A fake crime lab report that already cost the city of San Jose years of court battles and lost time will now take $150,000 to settle. San Jose will likely use cash from its liability claims reserve fund to pay off Michael Kerkeles, who in 2005 was accused of raping a mentally disabled woman with the cognitive capacity of an 8-year-old.

San Jose’s top casino cop has had enough. In his first interview since Casino M8trix filed lawsuits in February against the city of San Jose, Richard Teng, the San Jose Police Department’s gaming administrator, called accusations against him “a political nightmare.” There is history in this dispute.

The “victory” claimed by certain union members by suing the city over the word “reform”—as in “pension reform,” known as Measure B for the June ballot measure—may have actually jeopardized a future tax increase to fund their own jobs. The removal of the wording, “essential city services including neighborhood police patrols, fire stations, libraries, community centers, streets and parks,” was included in the ruling and cannot be used as a way for the city to lure residents into supporting higher taxation.

It appears Ballot Measure B is ready to go to voters. Superior Court judges granted small victories to both the city of San Jose and labor when clarifying what language should be used.

UPDATE: The California Superior Court set a hearing for Monday, April 2, to rule on competing lawsuits regarding Measure B.—Editor

Councilmember Pete Constant and Ballot Measure B’s campaign treasurer, Ben Roth, plan to file their own complaint in California Superior Court on Friday morning. Their petition claims opponents of the pension and benefits reform ballot measure used false and misleading statements in their arguments. The filing comes almost a week after labor unions filed their own lawsuit over ballot language. A judge could rule on both the unions’ lawsuit and the more recent petition ahead of the scheduled April 3 hearing.

A judge ruled in favor of attorneys representing city workers Monday to hold an expedited hearing on April 3 about the language of Measure B, the pension and benefits reform ballot measure. The ruling comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed Friday in California Superior Court that claims the ballot question violates the Election Code because it does not contain impartial and non-argumentative language, as the law requires.

The battle over redevelopment agency dollars will now be confined to just the city and state here in San Jose. On Wednesday, a settlement was reached between the city and Santa Clara County, which was owed $62.9 million.