Update 12/10/09: The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department has now officially ruled Tidus' death a homicide (.pdf). No arrests have been made.
Jeffrey Tidus, a Los Angeles civil litigator and a former vice president of the State Bar board of governors, died Tuesday morning after he was shot outside his Rolling Hills Estates home Monday night. He was 53. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has labeled Tidus’ death from a single gunshot would “suspicious.”
“We don’t know what happened yet,” said sheriff’s department spokesman Steve Whitmore. “It does not appear to be random.”
No arrests have been made and investigators do not know whether the shooting was connected in any way to Tidus’ work at the downtown Los Angeles firm of Baute & Tidus, Whitmore said.
The firm’s Web site said Tidus represented a number of banks and mortgage companies, including New Century Financial. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued three former executives of the collapsed mortgage lender on Monday for securities fraud.
Tidus was elected to the State Bar board of governors in 1995 after serving as the California Young Lawyers Association representative to the Bar board in 1989 and 1990.
Leon Goldin, also elected to the board of governors from Los Angeles in 1995, said he and Tidus ran as a slate.
“He was a very, very good lawyer and a person who always thought through every issue we confronted on the board of governors,” Goldin said Tuesday. “He was a friend.”
Goldin said Tidus was concerned about increasing diversity in the Bar, “not only along ethnic lines but making sure the glass ceiling for women went away.”
Tidus is survived by his wife, Sheryl Tidus, and a college-age son, according to the sheriff’s department.
— Cheryl Miller
Follow me on Twitter
Comments