The City of Hermosa Beach will pay $400,000 to 14 people who claimed police prevented them from picketing the Vons store on Pier Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway during a 2004 labor dispute, attorneys said.
The agreement settles a federal lawsuit that alleged assault and battery, false imprisonment and violation of the picketers’ constitutional right to free speech. Attorneys said the settlement also calls for the City of Manhattan Beach to pay $20,000.
“The Cities of Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach now know that violating the First Amendment rights of citizens will cost them dearly,” said Dan Stormer, one of the attorneys representing the 14 plaintiffs.
“This suit was filed to protect workers who exercise their First Amendment rights of free speech. We believe that this lawsuit will protect other workers in the future by forcing the City of Hermosa Beach to adopt proper police practices, as well as compensate the workers for the loss of their constitutional rights,” said attorney Anne Richardson.
Hermosa Beach City Manager Steve Burrell said police acknowledged no wrongdoing in the settlement, and Hermosa’s portion would be paid by an insurance pool to which the city belongs.
“It was strictly an economic settlement. It’s very expensive to go to federal court, and I’m sure the insurance company had that in mind. All our officers denied and continue to deny the claims,” Burrell said.
“For Manhattan Beach, [the settlement] was nuisance value. It would have cost us considerably more to try the case,” said Manhattan Beach City Attorney Robert Wadden.
“We didn’t feel we really had any liability. We were just assisting,” he said.
“Frankly, I personally reviewed the tapes of the incident and never saw anything in violation of civil rights on the part of our officers,” Wadden said.
The lawsuit filed in 2005 claimed that police officers under then-Chief Michael Lavin of Hermosa failed to act when a grocery shopper assaulted picketers, and met them with intimidation, physical force and false arrest when they went to the Hermosa police station to complain on Jan. 18, 2004.
At the time, police said about 75 picketers rallied at the Vons store and conducted “militant protesting,” trying to stop people from entering the store. Later that day, between 15 and 30 picketers marched to the police station in an attempt to file personnel complaints against officers, police said.
Police said they arrested one man on suspicion of obstructing an officer and another, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, on suspicion of failure to disperse.
In 2005 Hermosa agreed to pay $2,500 to settle a separate claim by two other picketers, one alleging false arrest and another alleging that an officer pushed him during the picketing.
The picketing came during a statewide supermarket labor dispute between Ralphs, Vons, Safeway and Albertsons and the United Fruit and Commercial Workers, which lasted 139 days. ER
