Anti-oil activist Chris Miller intends to file a lawsuit against the city of Hermosa Beach, alleging a civil rights violations and a variety of damages arising out of the city’s response to an election-night gathering last March.
Miller and her attorney Morgan Ricketts, of the Burbank law firm Ricketts & Yang, submitted an amended notice of claim to the city on Sept. 6. According to the notice, Miller seeks, among other things, a public apology from Sharon Papa, chief of the Hermosa Beach Police Department and unspecified compensation.
The notice is not itself a lawsuit, but is rather a prerequisite to filing claims against government entities. Once it is submitted, the city has 45 days to respond or will be deemed to have denied the claim, City Attorney Michael Jenkins said in an e-mail.
Miller and Ricketts filed their first notice of claim on July 31. The City Council and staff have subsequently discussed the matter in closed session, with ongoing discussions following the amendment of the claim.
City Manager Tom Bakaly said he was unable to respond to questions about individual claims until the city made a public decision about its response to the notice.
The potential claims stem from the evening of March 3, when Miller and others were celebrating the defeat of Measure O at the Standing Room on Hermosa Avenue. Measure O would have allowed drilling for oil in Hermosa’s tidelands. A Hermosa Beach police officer writing a ticket nearby claimed to have recognized Miller in the crowd and that he heard her leading the crowd in chanting obscenities at the police.
Officer George Brunn formalized his observations in a report eight days later. On March 23, Chief Papa sent a letter to Ken Hartley, chairman of the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce, reporting Brunn’s observations. Miller was subsequently removed from the Chamber of Commerce board.
Being removed from the chamber forms a key part of Miller’s potential damages. In addition to causing Miller “extreme humiliation,” losing her position on the chamber deprived her of “potential business opportunities and other benefits of being a member of the chamber’s board.”
The city subsequently hired a third-party investigator to assess the veracity of Brunn’s report. Although the city subsequently apologized to others in the crowd at the Standing Room on March 3, saying there was not enough evidence to link them with shouting obscenities, the report stood by Brunn’s observations about Miller.
Miller’s attorney dismissed the third-party investigation as inaccurate.
“There was a lot of bias in the report,” Ricketts said in an interview. “The methodology was striking.” In the interview, Ricketts also raised questions about the reliability of the officer involved. Brunn was the subject of a previous claim against the city of Hermosa Beach. In 2010, Hermosa Beach settled a suit filed by a former Los Angeles Police Department Officer alleging that Brunn had violated his civil rights. The city did not admit to wrongdoing, but paid out $175,000.
“It kind of sounds like they’re not getting the cream of the crop in Hermosa Beach for police officers,” Ricketts said.
