Flood aftermath » Water district hires lawyer
Fed up with “finger-pointing” from San Jose city leaders following the disastrous February floods, the Santa Clara Valley Water District has hired a bulldog lawyer to fight back.
James McManis, a prominent downtown attorney who’s handled several successful lawsuits against the city, is now working for the water district. He was spotted Tuesday going into a closed-session meeting with the water district’s board members. The topic was “Anticipated litigation ... February Flood Event.”
So is the water district getting ready to sue San Jose over the massive floods? Not exactly. It appears McManis was hired to fend off a potential lawsuit from San Jose.
“The water district didn’t do anything wrong,” McManis told IA following the meeting Tuesday. “This is not a time for finger-pointing. The city should be looking at helping its residents instead of scapegoating an innocent party.”
Hours after the Feb. 21 flood displaced hundreds of residents,
Mayor Sam Liccardo told reporters the water district had given San Jose incorrect figures about how much water Coyote Creek’s channels could hold before flooding. He blamed the data for San Jose’s slow response in evacuating residents.
But water district officials said the data readings were mere estimates — and a disclaimer on stream gauge reports said they were “preliminary,” needed additional vetting and “inaccuracies may be present.”
The news came before a scheduled joint meeting between the San Jose City Council and water district board members to hash out each agency’s responsibilities. The water district has in-house counsel — Stan
Yamamoto and four other lawyers — but district leaders said they need McManis to deal with this issue.
“It’s bizarre,” San Jose City Attorney Rick Doyle said. “We’ve made no threats of litigation.”
McManis’ hourly rate is $1,140. Doyle said the district’s “money would be better spent on solutions” like fixing Anderson Dam and developing better flood forecasting models.
McManis represented a Vietnamese community group in a lawsuit against San Jose over open-meeting law violations, in which a judge ruled against the city. He also represented the Bay 101 card room in a lawsuit over city regulations the club called onerous. It ended in a 2009 settlement.
“Jim McManis is an accomplished trial lawyer with an exceptional breadth of knowledge as to San Jose’s history, people and politics,” said spokesman
Marty Grimes. “He is the right person to represent the Santa Clara Valley Water District with respect to potential litigation related to the February 2017 flood.”
Judge weighing plea deal eyed for promotion
Talk about being in the spotlight: One of three Santa Clara County Superior Court judges now under consideration for a promotion to a state appellate court suddenly finds herself caught up in a high-profile domestic violence case.
Allison M. Danner is on Gov. Jerry Brown’s short list for an appointment to the influential 6th District Court of Appeal, along with her colleagues Mary Greenwood and Helen E. Williams.
The nominee will replace former Justice Miguel Marquez, whom Brown appointed in 2012 to the influential San Jose-based appeals court, which shapes law from Silicon Valley to Monterey.
Marquez left the appeals court last year to take a $350,000 a year job as chief operating officer of Santa Clara County, where he had previously served as county counsel.
In a victim impact statement posted online earlier this month, the wife of a former tech CEO criticized the District Attorney’s Office for showing leniency toward her husband in his second domestic violence-related case. Former Cuberon CEO
Abhishek Gattani had originally been charged with felony domestic violence stemming from two alleged incidents last spring involving his wife, former Apple engineer Neha Rastogi. But prosecutors say they would have difficulty winning the case if the matter went to trial.
Under the deal reached by the prosecution and defense, Gattani pleaded no contest to one felony count of accessory after the fact to an unspecified crime and a misdemeanor count of offensive touching. The plea deal spares Gattani from potential deportation back to his native India.
Danner was on vacation the day Gattani was supposed to be sentenced under the terms of the deal to 15 actual days in jail, plus five months of weekend work picking up trash along the freeways. But when Rastogi read her victim impact statement aloud in court, a substitute judge postponed sentencing, putting it back in Danner’s court. But Danner inherited the case from another judge, Kenneth Barnum, who oversaw the plea deal. On Friday, she postponed sentencing, ordered a full probation report and said she would listen to recordings Rastogi made of her husband to support her domestic violence allegations.
There’s no deadline for Brown to pick the nominee, but he will most likely do so this summer.
Council hopefuls line up to replace Rocha
It’s more than a year away, but the race for an open seat on the San Jose City Council that could sway the power balance on a council divided by labor and business interests is already taking shape.
Councilman Donald Rocha, who represents the District 9 in the Cambrian area, terms out next year. And at least five people are lining up to replace him. It’s too soon to tell who the frontrunners are, which candidates will score support from powerful business and labor groups or whom Rocha will back.
“I’m going to wait until I find out exactly who’s running,” the veteran councilman said. “Once we get a sense of what the field looks like, I hope to endorse.”
It’s a seat labor leaders are eager to hold on to. Rocha, who’s championed issues like minimum wage and affordable housing, has been a loyal vote for progressives. It’s especially important now that the council is ruled by a majority of labor-friendly policymakers, handing Mayor Sam Liccardo and his business-backed council allies a narrow 6-5 loss on four key votes this year.
The latest candidate to announce his run is Kalen
Gallagher, a Campbell Union High School District board member, tech startup guru and former middle school social studies teacher. Gallagher, 34, helped launch ClassDojo, an app that helps teachers connect with parents. Now he’s a leadership coach for the nonprofit Leadership for Educational Equity.
“San Jose is the center of innovation — residents are doing amazing things everyday — and our city government doesn’t seem to be on par with that and there’s room for improvement,” Gallagher said.
Gallagher could have some competition. Other candidates eyeing Rocha’s seat in 2018 include:
Sabuhi Siddique, 57, vice chair of the Human Relations Commission in Santa Clara County and a former hospital technician, says she enjoys public service and considers it a passion. She’s lived in the district for 23 years.
Pam Foley, 57, San Jose Unified School District board president and business owner. Foley, who’s represented the Willow Glen area since 2004, helped create a new teacher evaluation program.
Fred Buzo, 49, an associate state director at AARP, says he’s strongly considering a run, but will decide by summer. He worked as a policy aide for Liccardo for nearly eight years and as a chief to former San Jose Councilman Manh Nguyen. Shay Franco-Clausen, 42, a field representative and former campaign manager to Assemblyman Ash Kalra and PR professional. She helped coordinate the San Jose Jazz Festival and serves on the Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee Executive Committee.
Two local lawyers honored as ‘Champions of Justice’
Impeccably dressed in a suit and silk tie, defense lawyer Dan Mayfield blends in seamlessly with other counselors at the Hall of Justice. But he and his law partner
Constance Carpenter are anything but conventional, according to the Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
The group, which has been at the forefront of movements for social change since 1937 — including labor and civil rights — recognized them Saturday at an annual fundraising dinner in San Francisco as “Champions of Justice.”
Or, as Mayfield puts it: “Whenever I walk into court, they say, ‘Oh, there’s Dan, he’s the radical lawyer.’ And Candace practices left-wing family law.”
Mayfield, 68, is no wild-eyed agitator, though.
“He’s a consummate professional — tenacious, even-keeled, compassionate and extraordinarily skilled,” said Sylvia Perez-MacDonald, executive director of the county’s Independent Defense Counsel Office, which represents indigent defendants. “Dan is probably one of the best lawyers we have.”
Mayfield said he and Carpenter, 67, have viewed the law as a vehicle for social change since their college years during the Vietnam War protest era.
Carpenter, 67, also chaired the guild chapter’s first antisexism committee in the 1980s, said chapter treasurer Rachel
Gendell. Both Mayfield and Carpenter are superb mentors to other lawyers, she added.
Last year, Mayfield got the charges dropped against Salvador “Chava” Bustamante, executive director of Latinos United for a New America, who was arrested at an East San Jose Target store in September while trying to register voters in front of the store.
He’s also represented Donald Trump protesters and the so-called “Irvine 11,” a group of Muslim students, 10 of whom were convicted in 2011 of misdemeanors for disrupting a speech at UC Irvine by Israel’s ambassador. In criminal court earlier this year, he got a client acquitted of murder in a case that involved expert testimony from a hip-hop artist about AfricanAmerican slang and culture.