Landlord Of West Oakland Building Destroyed By Fire Was Working To Evict Tenants
A 2005 city inspector wrote that 'babies are getting asthma and very sick' in the building.
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2017/03/27/landlord-of-west-oakland-building-destroyed-by-fire-was-working-to-evict-tenants
Tenants of the San Pablo Avenue apartment building destroyed by a fire early this morning were resisting a controversial eviction, according to court records and interviews.
The residents even obtained a restraining order against the building's landlord. And, now, their lawyer is calling for an arson investigation.
Records also show that the West Oakland building's dangerous conditions were known to the landlord, master tenant, the City of Oakland, and other authorities.
The building's landlord, Keith Kim, was seeking to evict Urojas Community Services, a nonprofit that leased part of the building for a transitional-housing program that served dozens of homeless and very-low-income people.
But Urojas and some of its clients who lived in the building refused to leave.
James Cook, an attorney with John L. Burris Law Offices who is representing Urojas, said in an interview that Kim initially tried to evict the nonprofit right after the deadly Ghost Ship fire last December. Most recently, Kim gave Urojas a 30-day notice to vacate the building, but Urojas was fighting this eviction.
The legal battle had escalated in recent weeks.
"Next thing I know, I get up this morning, my client’s building is on fire, it’s up in smoke," Cook told the Express.
"I want it to be investigated as an arson."
Two have been confirmed dead in the fire and 86 people are displaced.
It's unclear what caused the blaze, but the structure has a recent history of numerous building code violations, including broken plumbing and heating, exposed wires, pests, electrical problems, and more.
Urojas Community Services filed the most recent complaint with the city, alleging that Kim had "deferred maintenance," allowing the building to fall into a state of disrepair. This housing-habitability complaint was verified by a city inspector who went to the address on March 3, according to city records.
The inspector noted that there was a major plumbing leak spilling sewage into the first and second floors. "The 3rd floor is occupied with squatters," the inspector wrote.
According to court records, Kim and a group of men tried to physically evict some of the residents in February. In response, the residents sought a court restraining order against Kim.
Tenant Brenda Corley, who also helped manage the Urojas program, wrote in a court document that Kim showed up with twelve men on February 14 to "forcibly remove items" and change locks.
"They threw our items into the street," Corley wrote. "The men threatened violence if anyone intervened."
According to Corley's account, Kim also told the building's tenants not to pay rent to Urojas Community Services, the master tenant. And Corley accused Kim of calling the Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services agency to ask that Urojas' funding be cut off. (The county helps fund Urojas' programs.)
The Express was unable to reach Kim for comment, but a temporary restraining order was granted by the court on February 15 preventing him from physically evicting tenants from his building.
The restraining order was later dismissed, on March 6, after Corley and Kim both failed to show up to a court hearing.
Cook said that Oakland City Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney had intervened in the dispute between Kim and Urojas to try to reach a deal. But Cook said that McElhaney was trying to resolve the situation by having Urojas vacate the building, and working with Kim to possibly secure it as an affordable-housing site.
Gibson McElhaney did not return a call or email seeking comment.
Oakland City Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney and her staff toured the building in February, according to a building inspector's report. McElhaney was reportedly working with Dignity Housing West, Inc. to take over part of the building for an affordable housing center, a move that would have displaced Urojas.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives is on its way to conduct an investigation of the fire alongside the Oakland Fire Department.
So far, one person has been confirmed dead, and several seriously injured. Other bodies could be hidden in the three-story building.
The Alameda County Sheriff's office is flying a drone equipped with a thermal camera over the building to locate hot spots and search for survivors or victims.
The fire comes almost four months after the deadly Ghost Ship fire that killed 36.
Other city and court records show that the building's substandard condition was known to the landlord, Urojas, and other authorities.
In May of 2016 a city building inspector found that a smoke alarm was missing in one of the units leased by Urojas from Kim.
A lawsuit filed in August of last year by a woman who used to live in the building alleges that the complex had no locks on the doors, no heat, defective plumbing, inadequate wiring, and other serious defects, including "hazardous fluids and materials" on the premises.
The woman filed a complaint with the city and felt the landlord and property manager had been given adequate time to fix the building's defects. Instead, the woman was sexually assaulted in August 2015, according to the lawsuit, due to the fact that her unit had no locks on the door.
In 2013 Oakland building inspector Timothy Low cited the building's owner for "hazardous and injurious" conditions and hit Kim with $3,239 in fees.
In 2005 city inspectors were called to the building to investigate a complaint that women and young children were living in overcrowded rooms infested with mold and leaky plumbing. "Babies are getting asthma and very sick," reads a building inspector's comments.
In 1996 another building inspector found that the fire escape was "tied up so tenants cannot get away in case of a fire."
Keith Kim bought the building in 1991 through a company called Mead Avenue Housing Associates, according to county records.
Showing posts with label #DesleyBrooks #CityofOakland #Oakland #CityCouncilmembers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #DesleyBrooks #CityofOakland #Oakland #CityCouncilmembers. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
164 City of Oakland puts up roadblocks to prevent warehouse owner from repairing fire damage. Building sold to Danny Haber and Seth Jacobsen
https://www.antievictionmap.com/danny-haber-and-alon-gutman/
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/former-ak-press-warehouse-sold-to-tech-co-op-developer-who-demolished-1919-market/Content?oid=5060621
671 24th Street and 674 23rd Street
AK Press and many other tenants were displaced in the fire that started in the building next door., where two people died in the blaze. Haber and his financiers - among them, Seth Jacobson - acquired both buildings and have plans to develop "Live Work" spaces at the site.sThe City of Oakland was said to have put up roadblocks as the previous owner attempted to repair the fire damage. Seth Jacobson was the owner of 1919 Market when the City forced tenants out due to the condition of the building.
Former AK Press Warehouse Sold to 'Tech Co-Op' Developer Who Demolished 1919 Market
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/former-ak-press-warehouse-sold-to-tech-co-op-developer-who-demolished-1919-market/Content
For more than two decades, the brick warehouse at 674 23rd Street in West Oakland was a hub of anti-capitalist praxis. Now, it's owned by a developer known for converting affordable housing into tech-worker dorms.
In September, the warehouse — which formerly housed the anarchist publishing collective AK Press — was quietly sold to a company controlled by the developer Danny Haber.
No stranger to controversy, Haber is currently being sued by the displaced tenants of another Oakland warehouse, 1919 Market Street, and also by residents of the Travelers Hotel, an SRO in Chinatown. They allege Haber engaged in a campaign of harassment to drive them out of their homes in order to redevelop the buildings and maximize rents.
Now, Haber has filed plans with the city to turn the AK Press location into a 24-unit live-work space. He's also in talks to purchase the adjoining warehouse, at 671 24th Street. Both warehouses were closed by the city in March 2015 after a fire.
Former residents of the two warehouses say their situation illustrates how, long before the Ghost Ship tragedy, the city was cracking down on counterculture spaces, and investors were exploiting fires and building-code problems to displace people from their homes.
"It doesn't work for us. It works for people who can come in, gobble up these buildings, and take advantage of this situation," said Jose Palafox, a past resident of the 23rd Street Warehouse.
alafox lived there for eight years. Early in the morning of March 21, 2015, a fire tore through an apartment in the adjoining building, 671 24th Street. Two people died: Davis Letona, 27, and Daniel "Moe" Thomas, 36.
After the blaze, city building inspectors closed both properties. All of the residents, as well as AK Press and the collective 1984 Printing, were forced out. Many of them had hopes of returning after their landlords made repairs.
Jonah Strauss, who lived in the 24th Street warehouse where the fire started, described how residents had to wake up one-another and rush to safety as flames leapt from windows.
After the fire, he and other tenants in his building accused their landlord, Kim Marienthal, of delaying and not making the necessary repairs so they could move back in.
"He still hasn't had any work done on the building," Strauss said in a recent interview.
One email sent to Oakland Deputy City Attorney Richard Illgen by a former resident of the 24th Street warehouse, and obtained through a Public Records Act request, called Marienthal an "exceedingly difficult landlord." The city redacted the renter’s name, but the sender accused Marienthal of attempting to use the fire to permanently evict his tenants.
"As is the story with too many buildings in Oakland these days, the owner is going to use this opportunity to do capital improvements and hike up rents," the email’s sender claimed.
Marienthal told the Express that his tenants were wrong about his intentions, and that the city’s extremely strict demands were to blame.
"I would much rather have been able to rebuild the building right away, the way it was, and continue renting to the tenants who were there," he said.
But the city rejected several rounds of plans, Marienthal claimed, which made it too expensive to rehab the units and keep rents affordable. "Finally, we came up with a plan the city found acceptable. But we basically had to redesign the building," he said.
Marienthal says, though, that the final plan’s price tag was more than double the insurance payout he received from the fire. As a result, he confirmed that he has been in talks with Haber about selling his building, although he’s yet to sign any deal. Marienthal added that Haber appears to have access to financing that gives him the ability to make the kinds of changes to warehouse spaces that the city is demanding.
Haber has previously sought investment opportunities in fire-damaged buildings with displaced tenants. For example, in 2014, he leased a San Francisco SRO damaged by a fire several years earlier, and turned it into a tech-worker dormitory. He was later sued by the tenants who lived there before the fire; they claimed that Haber violated San Francisco’s renter-protection laws by not offering them units when reconstruction was completed.
Residents of the AK Press warehouse had a different experience than tenants in the neighboring 24th Street building. Relations with their landlord, Jux Beck, remained amicable after the fire, and they hoped to be able to return. According to city records and interviews, Beck worked for almost a year with officials to try to bring the property up to code and make repairs.
"Jux was extremely responsible with everything," said Jason Willer, a musician and resident of the 23rd Street warehouse who helped renovate the interior in the early 2000s when Beck first purchased it. "He was the opposite of a slumlord. He installed smoke detectors and made the whole place very safe."
According to Willer, when the fire broke out in the 24th Street building and spread into the old AK Press warehouse, alarms went off. Lives were saved and damage was minimized thanks to Beck's safety precautions.
The Express was unable to contact Beck, but several of his former tenants said that the city made it too expensive and difficult for him to comply with current building and fire codes.
Charles Weigl of AK Press, which has since re-located to Chico, described Beck as "an old-school punk" who was "very concerned about helping sustain political and artistic communities in Oakland."
Weigl said Beck did his best, but ultimately ran out of funds, forcing him to sell the property. But, even then, he “tried to find a buyer who would agree to retain aspects of the building’s former use and spirit, including a space for AK [Press] if we wanted it.”
"It would have cost millions to bring it up to 2015 code," said Willer. He complained that city officials initially responded to the fire and displacement with sympathy, but that, when media attention died down, the city’s building department threw up expensive and time-consuming roadblocks.
Beck gave up in December of last year. "We are under contract to sell the property," he explained in a letter to Oakland building officials.
He sold the warehouse to two people with ties to the East Bay punk community, Shammy Saenz and Zephyr Buechler. But then, on September 1 of this year, Saenz and Buechler sold the building to 674 23rd Street LLC, a company controlled by Haber. It's unclear why they offloaded the property, and the Express was unable to reach both Saenz and Buechler.
Haber confirmed that he purchased the old AK Press warehouse. He said that Beuchler and Saenz "ran into problems" and were unable to finance the building’s rehab, so they sold it through the brokerage CBRE.
"Nobody was living there for two years. We’ll add 24 units to the housing stock," Haber said.
According to county records, Haber bought the building with a $2.25 million loan from Red Tower Capital, a private-equity firm in San Francisco. Also in on the deal was Seth Jacobson, whose signature appears in loan documents. Jacobson was the owner of 1919 Market Street, and Madison Park Financial was the property manager for that warehouse during most of this time. That company was owned by John Protopappas, a close friend of Mayor Libby Schaaf. Protopappas also was the chair of Schaaf's mayoral campaign.
The warehouse's numerous fire and building-code violations were known to the city for years, but it was allowed to operate as a live-work space. However, when the city suddenly red-tagged 1919 Market this past January, dozens of renters were displaced. Many still haven’t found permanent homes. Some have been forced to leave Oakland.
According to public records, Jacobson sold 1919 Market to a company controlled by Haber in June. Haber later filed plans with the city to build a 63-unit live-work project on the site. Several former tenants are suing Haber, Jacobson, and Protopappas over the 1919 Market warehouse shutdown.
Jacobson didn't respond to emails from the Express, and Haber declined to talk about Jacobson’s role in buying the 23rd Street building.
Haber said that none of the former tenants of the 23rd Street building have expressed interest in returning to their former units, but he said he'd be willing to make space for them — if the city would subsidize his project.
He said that a staff member in a city council member’s office recently told him he may be eligible to use some of the affordable-housing infrastructure bond money that voters approved in November. He declined to name the council member.
"We'd use the affordable housing bond to cover the subsidy so people come back. This way we can take these projects that have fire damage, bring them back to what they were in a safe, nice way," Haber said.
However, Haber has no track record of developing affordable housing. In fact, at the Hotel Travelers, he demolished most of the 78 SRO units and is converting them into market-rate rentals, according to city records.
On Tuesday the Oakland City Council passed a 45-day moratorium on SRO conversions, partly in response to Haber's elimination of affordable housing at Hotel Travelers.
Orlando Chavez, one of the hotel's residents who is suing Haber over harassment, said tenants should be skeptical of his promises. "Based on my experience and what I know about him, he'll do anything to get control of the building and then do what he wants. He’s motivated by profit," Chavez said.
As for the previous tenants of the 23rd Street Warehouse, many of them have given up on Oakland because it is no longer affordable.
As Weigl of AK Press put it: "The obvious outcome was that political and community ideals didn’t survive the process."
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/former-ak-press-warehouse-sold-to-tech-co-op-developer-who-demolished-1919-market/Content?oid=5060621
671 24th Street and 674 23rd Street
AK Press and many other tenants were displaced in the fire that started in the building next door., where two people died in the blaze. Haber and his financiers - among them, Seth Jacobson - acquired both buildings and have plans to develop "Live Work" spaces at the site.sThe City of Oakland was said to have put up roadblocks as the previous owner attempted to repair the fire damage. Seth Jacobson was the owner of 1919 Market when the City forced tenants out due to the condition of the building.
Former AK Press Warehouse Sold to 'Tech Co-Op' Developer Who Demolished 1919 Market
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/former-ak-press-warehouse-sold-to-tech-co-op-developer-who-demolished-1919-market/Content
For more than two decades, the brick warehouse at 674 23rd Street in West Oakland was a hub of anti-capitalist praxis. Now, it's owned by a developer known for converting affordable housing into tech-worker dorms.
In September, the warehouse — which formerly housed the anarchist publishing collective AK Press — was quietly sold to a company controlled by the developer Danny Haber.
No stranger to controversy, Haber is currently being sued by the displaced tenants of another Oakland warehouse, 1919 Market Street, and also by residents of the Travelers Hotel, an SRO in Chinatown. They allege Haber engaged in a campaign of harassment to drive them out of their homes in order to redevelop the buildings and maximize rents.
Now, Haber has filed plans with the city to turn the AK Press location into a 24-unit live-work space. He's also in talks to purchase the adjoining warehouse, at 671 24th Street. Both warehouses were closed by the city in March 2015 after a fire.
Former residents of the two warehouses say their situation illustrates how, long before the Ghost Ship tragedy, the city was cracking down on counterculture spaces, and investors were exploiting fires and building-code problems to displace people from their homes.
"It doesn't work for us. It works for people who can come in, gobble up these buildings, and take advantage of this situation," said Jose Palafox, a past resident of the 23rd Street Warehouse.
alafox lived there for eight years. Early in the morning of March 21, 2015, a fire tore through an apartment in the adjoining building, 671 24th Street. Two people died: Davis Letona, 27, and Daniel "Moe" Thomas, 36.
After the blaze, city building inspectors closed both properties. All of the residents, as well as AK Press and the collective 1984 Printing, were forced out. Many of them had hopes of returning after their landlords made repairs.
Jonah Strauss, who lived in the 24th Street warehouse where the fire started, described how residents had to wake up one-another and rush to safety as flames leapt from windows.
After the fire, he and other tenants in his building accused their landlord, Kim Marienthal, of delaying and not making the necessary repairs so they could move back in.
"He still hasn't had any work done on the building," Strauss said in a recent interview.
One email sent to Oakland Deputy City Attorney Richard Illgen by a former resident of the 24th Street warehouse, and obtained through a Public Records Act request, called Marienthal an "exceedingly difficult landlord." The city redacted the renter’s name, but the sender accused Marienthal of attempting to use the fire to permanently evict his tenants.
"As is the story with too many buildings in Oakland these days, the owner is going to use this opportunity to do capital improvements and hike up rents," the email’s sender claimed.
Marienthal told the Express that his tenants were wrong about his intentions, and that the city’s extremely strict demands were to blame.
"I would much rather have been able to rebuild the building right away, the way it was, and continue renting to the tenants who were there," he said.
But the city rejected several rounds of plans, Marienthal claimed, which made it too expensive to rehab the units and keep rents affordable. "Finally, we came up with a plan the city found acceptable. But we basically had to redesign the building," he said.
Marienthal says, though, that the final plan’s price tag was more than double the insurance payout he received from the fire. As a result, he confirmed that he has been in talks with Haber about selling his building, although he’s yet to sign any deal. Marienthal added that Haber appears to have access to financing that gives him the ability to make the kinds of changes to warehouse spaces that the city is demanding.
Haber has previously sought investment opportunities in fire-damaged buildings with displaced tenants. For example, in 2014, he leased a San Francisco SRO damaged by a fire several years earlier, and turned it into a tech-worker dormitory. He was later sued by the tenants who lived there before the fire; they claimed that Haber violated San Francisco’s renter-protection laws by not offering them units when reconstruction was completed.
Residents of the AK Press warehouse had a different experience than tenants in the neighboring 24th Street building. Relations with their landlord, Jux Beck, remained amicable after the fire, and they hoped to be able to return. According to city records and interviews, Beck worked for almost a year with officials to try to bring the property up to code and make repairs.
"Jux was extremely responsible with everything," said Jason Willer, a musician and resident of the 23rd Street warehouse who helped renovate the interior in the early 2000s when Beck first purchased it. "He was the opposite of a slumlord. He installed smoke detectors and made the whole place very safe."
According to Willer, when the fire broke out in the 24th Street building and spread into the old AK Press warehouse, alarms went off. Lives were saved and damage was minimized thanks to Beck's safety precautions.
The Express was unable to contact Beck, but several of his former tenants said that the city made it too expensive and difficult for him to comply with current building and fire codes.
Charles Weigl of AK Press, which has since re-located to Chico, described Beck as "an old-school punk" who was "very concerned about helping sustain political and artistic communities in Oakland."
Weigl said Beck did his best, but ultimately ran out of funds, forcing him to sell the property. But, even then, he “tried to find a buyer who would agree to retain aspects of the building’s former use and spirit, including a space for AK [Press] if we wanted it.”
"It would have cost millions to bring it up to 2015 code," said Willer. He complained that city officials initially responded to the fire and displacement with sympathy, but that, when media attention died down, the city’s building department threw up expensive and time-consuming roadblocks.
Beck gave up in December of last year. "We are under contract to sell the property," he explained in a letter to Oakland building officials.
He sold the warehouse to two people with ties to the East Bay punk community, Shammy Saenz and Zephyr Buechler. But then, on September 1 of this year, Saenz and Buechler sold the building to 674 23rd Street LLC, a company controlled by Haber. It's unclear why they offloaded the property, and the Express was unable to reach both Saenz and Buechler.
Haber confirmed that he purchased the old AK Press warehouse. He said that Beuchler and Saenz "ran into problems" and were unable to finance the building’s rehab, so they sold it through the brokerage CBRE.
"Nobody was living there for two years. We’ll add 24 units to the housing stock," Haber said.
According to county records, Haber bought the building with a $2.25 million loan from Red Tower Capital, a private-equity firm in San Francisco. Also in on the deal was Seth Jacobson, whose signature appears in loan documents. Jacobson was the owner of 1919 Market Street, and Madison Park Financial was the property manager for that warehouse during most of this time. That company was owned by John Protopappas, a close friend of Mayor Libby Schaaf. Protopappas also was the chair of Schaaf's mayoral campaign.
The warehouse's numerous fire and building-code violations were known to the city for years, but it was allowed to operate as a live-work space. However, when the city suddenly red-tagged 1919 Market this past January, dozens of renters were displaced. Many still haven’t found permanent homes. Some have been forced to leave Oakland.
According to public records, Jacobson sold 1919 Market to a company controlled by Haber in June. Haber later filed plans with the city to build a 63-unit live-work project on the site. Several former tenants are suing Haber, Jacobson, and Protopappas over the 1919 Market warehouse shutdown.
Jacobson didn't respond to emails from the Express, and Haber declined to talk about Jacobson’s role in buying the 23rd Street building.
Haber said that none of the former tenants of the 23rd Street building have expressed interest in returning to their former units, but he said he'd be willing to make space for them — if the city would subsidize his project.
He said that a staff member in a city council member’s office recently told him he may be eligible to use some of the affordable-housing infrastructure bond money that voters approved in November. He declined to name the council member.
"We'd use the affordable housing bond to cover the subsidy so people come back. This way we can take these projects that have fire damage, bring them back to what they were in a safe, nice way," Haber said.
However, Haber has no track record of developing affordable housing. In fact, at the Hotel Travelers, he demolished most of the 78 SRO units and is converting them into market-rate rentals, according to city records.
On Tuesday the Oakland City Council passed a 45-day moratorium on SRO conversions, partly in response to Haber's elimination of affordable housing at Hotel Travelers.
Orlando Chavez, one of the hotel's residents who is suing Haber over harassment, said tenants should be skeptical of his promises. "Based on my experience and what I know about him, he'll do anything to get control of the building and then do what he wants. He’s motivated by profit," Chavez said.
As for the previous tenants of the 23rd Street Warehouse, many of them have given up on Oakland because it is no longer affordable.
As Weigl of AK Press put it: "The obvious outcome was that political and community ideals didn’t survive the process."
Thursday, November 1, 2018
159 Oakland may not be done paying for that shove delivered by City Councilwoman Desley Brooks to former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Think-Oakland-is-done-paying-for-Desley-Brooks-12751145.php
Oakland may not be done paying for that shove delivered by City Councilwoman Desley Brooks to former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown at a Jack London Square restaurant.
An Alameda County jury hit Oakland with a $3.77 million verdict last year — then, for good measure, tacked on $550,000 in punitive damages against Brooks herself.
Now, Brown’s legal team is seeking $1.1 million in attorneys’ fees for the elder-abuse lawsuit they filed over the October 2015 push and fall that Brown suffered when she and Brooks got into an argument at Everett and Jones Barbeque.
The jury found that the councilwoman had pushed the then-72-year-old Brown over a row of chairs.
In a sworn declaration filed in Alameda County Superior Court, the former Panther leader said she had been turned down by several prominent Bay Area civil rights attorneys after they concluded her claim was good for no more than $20,000 to $25,000.
And that she was told it was going to be an uphill battle because Brooks is “a powerful Oakland politician.”
The Sausalito law firm Bonner & Bonner, however, decided her case had merit and “a high jury, trial value,” Brown said.
And it appears they were right. Attorney Charles Bonner is now asking the city for fees of up to $700 an hour — plus expenses — for himself, his son and another lawyer, as well as for a half-dozen legal assistants. Total tab: $1.1 million.
Bonner did not return our call seeking comment, but he did tell the court that his fees are “consistent with the San Francisco Bay Area market rates for attorneys of comparable skill and experience and with court awards of attorneys’ fees in other cases.”
A spokesman for Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker, whose office defended Brooks, also declined to comment.
A hearing on the fees has been set for March 23.
Oakland may not be done paying for that shove delivered by City Councilwoman Desley Brooks to former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown at a Jack London Square restaurant.
An Alameda County jury hit Oakland with a $3.77 million verdict last year — then, for good measure, tacked on $550,000 in punitive damages against Brooks herself.
Now, Brown’s legal team is seeking $1.1 million in attorneys’ fees for the elder-abuse lawsuit they filed over the October 2015 push and fall that Brown suffered when she and Brooks got into an argument at Everett and Jones Barbeque.
The jury found that the councilwoman had pushed the then-72-year-old Brown over a row of chairs.
In a sworn declaration filed in Alameda County Superior Court, the former Panther leader said she had been turned down by several prominent Bay Area civil rights attorneys after they concluded her claim was good for no more than $20,000 to $25,000.
And that she was told it was going to be an uphill battle because Brooks is “a powerful Oakland politician.”
The Sausalito law firm Bonner & Bonner, however, decided her case had merit and “a high jury, trial value,” Brown said.
And it appears they were right. Attorney Charles Bonner is now asking the city for fees of up to $700 an hour — plus expenses — for himself, his son and another lawyer, as well as for a half-dozen legal assistants. Total tab: $1.1 million.
Bonner did not return our call seeking comment, but he did tell the court that his fees are “consistent with the San Francisco Bay Area market rates for attorneys of comparable skill and experience and with court awards of attorneys’ fees in other cases.”
A spokesman for Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker, whose office defended Brooks, also declined to comment.
A hearing on the fees has been set for March 23.
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