A state appeals court upheld $5 million in damages and attorneys’ fees Thursday to a former San Francisco deputy city attorney who was fired after investigating questionable city payments to plumbing companies.

Joanne Hoeper, an 18-year veteran of the office who was then serving as chief trial deputy to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, was removed by Herrera in August 2012 after presenting the findings of her investigation. He transferred her to a temporary position at the district attorney’s office, and then dismissed her from that post in January 2014.

Hoeper had been alerted in December 2011 to a pattern of rising payments by the city to sewer companies for alleged damage to sewer lines by the roots of city-owned trees. She said she determined that the tree roots were not actually harming the sewer lines, that city payments to the companies had soared from $142,000 a year to $4 million in a decade, and that two city attorney staffers had approved dubious payments.

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Her report to Herrera said that some plumbing companies were defrauding the city and that San Francisco was paying inflated prices to replace sewers that did not need replacement. Hoeper said she found no evidence of kickbacks or corrupt practices by city employees, but said one staff member was wrongly accepting claims from the plumbing companies rather than the property owners.

Hoeper was distraught about her removal from the office and said she told Herrera she had turned down a job offer from then-Attorney General Kamala Harris in 2011 after Herrera assured her she had a future in the office.

When she sued over her firing, however, the office denied retaliating against her and said Herrera had decided to replace her years earlier for other reasons,compounded by “her exercise of poor judgment in dealing with the investigation.”

But a Superior Court judge found in March 2017 that the dismissal was retaliatory and had violated Hoeper’s rights under the state Whistleblower Protection Act. She was awarded $2.63 million in damages and $2.4 million to reimburse her attorneys.

In Thursday’s ruling, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said the evidence “amply supports” the jury’s conclusion that Hoeper’s sewer investigation was a factor in her firing. The court also said the dismissal and the surrounding circumstances effectively ended Hoeper’s 30-year legal career, supporting damages for lost income and emotional distress.

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On another issue, the court rejected the city’s argument that much of the evidence Hoeper presented should have been excluded because it involved confidential attorney-client interchanges between Herrera’s office and the city.

San Francisco waived any such confidentiality by releasing parts of its report, including its condemnation of Hoeper’s performance, to The Chronicle and another publication, the Westside Observer, Justice Peter Siggins said in the 3-0 ruling.

“This decision supports whistle-blowers who risk their careers to stand up to corruption in government,” said Hoeper’s lawyers, Karl Olson and Therese Cannata.

John Coté, a spokesman for Herrera, said the case was simply an employment dispute, and that no court had made any finding of corruption.

“Sometimes juries get it wrong, and that’s what happened here,” Coté said in a statement. “It’s unfortunate the court did not recognize that the city attorney had ample legitimate reasons for terminating Ms. Hoeper.”

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Wealth management firm Fisher Investments says it is moving its headquarters from Camas to Texas to protest a Supreme Court decision upholding Washington’s new capital gains tax.

“In honor of the wisdom and legal knowledge of the Washington State Supreme Court and what it may do next, Fisher Investments is immediately moving its headquarters from Washington State to Texas,” Fisher said in a brief announcement Friday. The company did not respond to follow-up requests on Sunday.

Fisher is a major employer in Clark County, but the company gave no indication that it will move jobs to Texas. Ken Fisher, the billionaire who founded the company, has said in the past that the head office designation is irrelevant. Fisher already lives in Dallas, according to his social media profiles.

Neither Texas nor Washington have an income tax, but in 2021 the Olympia legislature introduced a 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks, bonds, and other assets — with an exemption for the first $250,000 per year. The tax excludes real estate, retirement accounts and the sale of some small businesses.

Because Washington relies heavily on sales taxes for state revenue, lower-income residents bear a higher share of the cost of public services than in most other states. The capital gains tax divided Washington’s wealthy, with some arguing it would drive investment out of the state and others saying the wealthy would have to pay a larger share.

Some wealthy Washington and farming organizations questioned the capital gains tax, claiming it was an unconstitutional income or wealth tax. The state Supreme Court dismissed their efforts on Friday, ruling 7-2 that the capital gains tax is an allowable consumption tax.

Fisher employed approximately 1,800 people at Camas in 2020 out of 3,700 across the company. It also has corporate offices in the San Francisco Bay Area; Plano, Texas; and Tampa, Fla.

Fisher Investments says it has nearly $200 billion under management for individual investors, institutions and retirement plans. Fisher, formerly headquartered near Silicon Valley, announced plans to open a large office in Clark County in 2008. Back then, founder Ken Fisher said they wanted to move from the expensive real estate in the Bay Area to a more business-friendly place in a state with no personal income taxes.

Corporate headquarters were once an indication of where a company had its main operations. That has been less the case in recent years with the advent of remote work and satellite offices – a trend that has accelerated in the wake of the pandemic.

Fisher did not respond Sunday to questions about whether jobs will be relocated away from Camas as a result of the Supreme Court ruling. But in 2015, Ken Fisher told The Columbian newspaper that the headquarters’ designation was “technologically outdated” and had no impact on the company’s actual operations.

“The government requires a mailing address for ‘headquarters,’ and ours has been changed to Camas,” Fisher said. “Otherwise it has no meaning at all.”

Wealth management firms pulled billions of dollars from Fisher investments in 2019 after Ken Fisher made sexist comments during a fireside chat at an investment conference in San Francisco. Attendees said he spoke about genitals and pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and likened winning a client’s trust to “trying to get in a girl’s pants”.

In previous tweets, Fisher had made sexual jokes, asking if African Americans would have been better off with three more decades of slavery. Fisher initially rebuked critics but later repented and apologized amid the exodus of client funds.

“Some of the words and phrases I used during a recent conference to emphasize certain points were clearly wrong and I shouldn’t have used them,” Fisher said. “I realize that this type of language has no place in our company or our industry. I sincerely apologize.”

– Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com |

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A San Francisco landlord who was once described as an “unscrupulous predator” who allegedly tried to evict tenants from a rented apartment pays them $ 2.7 million, a state appeals court ruled.

The court upheld the award last month in a 2015 lawsuit filed by Dale Duncan and Marta Munoz Mendoza, who lived in the building with their daughter.

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The lawsuit alleged that a company controlled by Anne Kihagi harassed her for more than a year to force her out of her apartment in order to attract higher-paying tenants.

They were eventually forced to vacate the building when the landlord filed an “owner eviction,” which allows eviction if an owner will be living in the building. Kihagi claimed that a family member who also had an interest in the homeowners company was moving in, which the family lawyer said never happened.

The family moved into a two-bedroom house with a rent that was almost three times what they paid for the apartment, according to their lawsuit.

In 2017, a jury awarded them more than $ 3.5 million, which reduced a pre-trial court to $ 2.7 million.

In its 3-0 ruling confirming this award, the First District Court of Appeals said landlords “ignored or delayed responses to maintenance and servicing issues, were uncommunicative and uncooperative, and became increasingly hostile.”

The decision included removing recycling bins, refusing to repair a leaky water heater, blocking access to a laundry room, and turning off electricity.

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Messages requesting comments from a lawyer representing Kihagi were not immediately returned.

It is the latest of many legal disputes between Kihagi, who once owned nearly a dozen apartment buildings in San Francisco.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera once described Kihagi as “a ruthless predator who targets tenants in rent-controlled homes for harassment and eviction, and weed out seniors and people with disabilities for particularly despicable abuse.”

In 2017, Kihagi was fined $ 5.5 million in a city attorney’s lawsuit.

A judge said Kihagi and her co-defendants exhibited “an ongoing pattern of bad faith harassment, retaliation and fraud” directed against tenants.

The properties were ordered by a court and some of them were sold.

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