The campaign to lift Hermosa Beach’s ban on oil drilling in the city’s tidelands ended exactly one year ago, but it still has the ability to put citizens up in arms.
Morgan Ricketts, an attorney for anti-oil activist Chris Miller, issued a press release last Monday stating that an investigator hired to examine an election-night incident “was in fact working as the city’s attorney [italics in original]” instead of being “neutral, unbiased and independent.”
The city rejected the characterization. Council member Jeff Duclos described the release as part of “a legal strategy meant to incite people.” The strategy appears to have worked, with critical reaction to the news dominating public comment period at a city council meeting the following day.
Miller is currently suing the city, Police Chief Sharon Papa, Officer George Brunn, the Chamber of Commerce and Visitor’s Bureau, and former chamber president Ken Hartley in federal court. Her claims stem from the evening of March 3, 2015, when Miller and others were celebrating the defeat of Measure O at the Standing Room on Hermosa Avenue. Officer Brunn, who was writing a ticket nearby, claims to have recognized Miller in the crowd and to have heard her leading the crowd in chanting obscenities about the police.
Brunn formalized his observations in a report eight days later. On March 23, Chief Papa sent a letter to Hartley reporting Brunn’s observations. Miller was subsequently removed from her position on the chamber board, forming the basis of the damages she seeks in her suit.
In May of last year, the city hired Donna Evans to serve as an independent investigator into the incident and the city’s response. In January of this year, Ricketts filed a discovery request seeking “all documents created by” Evans regarding the incident. The city’s Feb. 17 response said that the request violates the attorney-client privilege because “Evans is an attorney hired by the City of Hermosa Beach.” (Case law allows entities like cities and corporations to claim the attorney-client privilege.)
City officials maintain that although they paid Evans, she was not representing them. In a letter to Evans dated April 30, 2015, City Manager Tom Bakaly outlined the city’s goals for a “neutral fact-finding administrative investigation.” The agreement, in which the city is referred to as “Client,” sets out the “‘limited scope legal services’” Evans had been hired to perform.
“Client understands that Attorney has not been retained to represent Client in litigation, to advocated on behalf of Client, or to advise Client in regard to any steps Client should take based on the investigative results,” the agreement states.
Some residents nonetheless felt deceived. In an email exchange dated April 29, 2015 between Bakaly and resident Katrina Bacallao, Bacallao asks a number of questions about the provenance of the investigator. Bakaly discloses that Evans is under contract with the city, but does not mention that Evans’s name was suggested by Hermosa Beach Police Capt. Milton McKinnon.
In an email sent to the City Clerk for public comment at the council meeting, Bacallao referred to Ricketts’s press release, and promised city officials, “You will be held accountable by the residents of this city.”
Mayor pro tem Hany Fangary, who was present at the Standing Room March 3 and was also interviewed by the investigator, defended the city’s strategy.
“Ms. Evans was not hired to defend the city,” Fangary said. “But the city is entitled to the work-product privilege. Any city, any municipality would take advantage of this.”
