JUDGE REJECTS LAWSUIT FILED BY BURBANK CRITICS.

Byline: Peter Hartlaub Daily News Staff Writer

A defamation lawsuit against the city of Burbank was thrown out of court Wednesday, ending what appears to be a very costly lesson in free speech for two critics of the City Council.

Don Porco and Elodie McKee sued in 1997 for more than $1 million, claiming they were defamed by a taped message on a private telephone hotline.

They alleged city employees were involved.

Superior Court Judge John Ouderkirk, who had already ruled that the taped messages were political expressions protected by the First Amendment, refused Wednesday to let the case go to trial.

Now Porco and McKee are stuck with a bill for $15,000 in attorneys' fees from two men named defendants in the suit.

A future hearing will determine whether they have to pay nearly $63,000 more for two private attorneys hired by the city at $335 and $205 per hour.

Although free speech grounds were among the reasons the lawsuit was dismissed, it is Porco and McKee who have insisted from the beginning that their own First Amendment rights were trampled.

When the lawsuit was filed in October 1996, it alleged a citywide conspiracy to quell the voices of citizens who expressed unpopular political opinions.

Porco, a Burbank resident since 1953, had written two letters to a local newspaper. McKee, a Burbank resident since 1985, spoke at City Council meetings.

The lawsuit claimed city employees responded to the criticism on a private telephone hotline called ``The Slander Station,'' telling listeners to ``hunt a Porco down and waste it.'' Porco also accused hotline organizers of implying that he was a child molester.

McKee also claimed city employees retaliated against her by placing a ``slashed and disfigured mannequin'' in front of her home.

The plaintiffs added Burbank police Lt. Don Brown as a defendant in the suit, claiming he was the hotline mastermind and that his voice was on the tape.

Brown's lawyers argued that even if all the allegations were true, the hotline comments were protected by the First Amendment.

``The law was simply not designed to protect a person against hurt feelings, name calling or childish pranks,'' Brown's lawyer said in court papers.

Ouderkirk agreed, and dismissed the case against Brown and Charles Lombardo, now a Burbank appointee to the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority. He also ordered Porco and McKee to pay Brown and Lombardo's attorneys' fees.

On Wednesday, Ouderkirk ruled that the allegations of a city conspiracy were unfounded.

He left the door open for the city to seek attorney's fees under a statute that punishes people who file frivolous lawsuits.

In court papers, lawyers for the city said it was McKee who launched a ``vendetta'' against the city, in part because of a 1990 arrest by city police officers that led to a failed excessive-force lawsuit.