Litigation
Jun. 15, 2002
Political Ambitions
Top 30 Women Litigators - Angela Alioto - Considering her family background, it's no surprise San Francisco attorney Angela Alioto chose the line of work that she did.
Angela Alioto
Considering her family background, it's no surprise San Francisco attorney Angela Alioto chose the line of work that she did.
"I have six brothers, three of them are lawyers, and I used to work at my dad's law office," she says. "I just grew up in the law."
Her father, Joseph L. Alioto, was a powerful antitrust attorney and mayor of San Francisco from 1968 to 1976. He died on Jan. 29, 1998.
Despite her Italian husband's forbidding her from going to law school, Alioto became an attorney and a prominent politician in her hometown, San Francisco.
She graduated from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 1983 but put off her legal career to be on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 1988 to 1997.
When she had to leave office because of term limits, she set up her own firm using her beloved father's name, Law Offices of Joseph L. Alioto and Angela Alioto.
"I had no idea what type of law I was going to do until a young African-American man came into my new office and wanted to sue Maersk Shipping Lines - one of the largest shipping companies in the world, with the fewest African-American employees," she says.
That case settled. Two years later, in 2000, Alioto won the largest-ever verdict in an employment discrimination case, against the makers of Wonder Bread and Twinkies. Caroll v. Interstate Brands Corp., 995728 (San Francisco Super. Ct., verdict Aug. 2, 2000).
She is representing clients in lawsuits against food industry giants such as Sara Lee and Foster Farms.
And despite several lawsuits filed against her by former employees, and two previous runs for office against San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown, Alioto plans to run at least one more time.
"I'm absolutely interested in going back into politics, and it wouldn't be for anything less or for anything more than mayor of San Francisco," she says.
Christina Landers
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