A Dive Into the Lawyer Blockng WinCo Plans in North Seattle

I LOVE WinCo, by far my favorite grocery store, when a shady legal group blocked my beloved grocery store from entering the city I had to dig into who this asshole is.

The appellant is Lake Washington Working Families (LWWF). According to the official case page and appeal filings, LWWF uses the same contact information (address, phone, etc) as a lawyer, Karl G. Anuta. In the appeal letter, Anuta described LWWF as “a coalition of King County residents, activists and organizations.” The Hearing Examiner ultimately accepted LWWF’s standing and reversed the City’s DNS on April 9.

I looked into Anuta’s public background. His public law-office site describes him as a Portland solo lawyer focused in part on environmental law, and he shows a recurring pattern of representing citizen or environmental opposition groups in development fights. On his own site, he says he represented local opponents to a South Salem Costco and also represented Citizens for Responsible Development in The Dalles against a Wal-Mart project. Public court opinions linked on that site show him as counsel in those matters. So the WinCo fight does not look like a one-off. It fits a broader pattern of representing anti-development or anti-big-box opposition.

I want to add, a lot of commentors in teh other threads were tying Anuta to Kroger and the other ilk, however I wasn’t able to find any affiliation between the two. Any claims to that connection are just speculation as far as I can tell.

One interesting detail in WinCo’s briefing is that it alleged LWWF witness Benjamin Brostrom works for a grocery chain that directly competes with WinCo, but the documents do not name that chain.

So there may be more to uncover, WinCo’s lawyers seems to know something. But at this point the solid, documented story is that LWWF appears to be a real but opaque coalition represented by a lawyer with a history of backing citizen/environmental opposition to large retail projects.

Sources I went through, just got from googling: Seattle Hearing Examiner case page: https://web6.seattle.gov/Examiner/case/W-25-008 Appeal letter: https://web6.seattle.gov/Examiner/case/document/41065 Decision: https://web6.seattle.gov/Examiner/case/document/43125 Karl G. Anuta site: https://sites.google.com/site/lawofficeofkarlanuta/home Salem Costco page: https://sites.google.com/site/lawofficeofkarlanuta/home/salem-costco-opposition Wal-Mart / The Dalles page: https://sites.google.com/site/lawofficeofkarlanuta/home/cfrd-v-dsl