North Bay Business Journal

Sutter Pacific Medical Foundation, part of the Sutter Health network, announced the addition of dermatologist, Helena Longin, M.D., to its roster of doctors in Santa Rosa. …

Brannan’s Grill in Napa appointed Thomas Hartwell as it’s new chef. …

Dickenson, Peatman & Fogarty Tom Adams has joined Dickenson, Peatman & Fogarty as senior counsel in the Land Use department in the firm’s Napa office. …

Michael J. Fish has joined Merrill, Arnone & Jones as a partner. …

The board of tustees of the Land Trust of Napa County appointed Douglas Parker as president and CEO, succeeding Joel Tranmer as the resident & CEO and John Hoffnagle, who served as the executive director of the Trust for 24 years. …

Tiburon resident Erik Zech has joined Pearl.com as chief financial officer, where he will lead the company’s finance, accounting, investor relations, treasury and corporate finance functions. …

CADE Estate Winery appointed Danielle Cyrot to the position of winemaker. …

SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Jerry Brown on Sept. 27 signed into law Assembly Bill 2339, designed to identify and eliminate legal and statutory impediments affecting the adoption and use of geothermal heat pump and geothermal ground-loop technologies.

SANTA ROSA — Nearly 660 staff nurses at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital went on strike Tuesday morning at Sonoma County’s biggest hospital as the St. Joseph Health-owned facility and the union representing the nurses, Staff Nurses’ Association, failed to reach agreement on a number of employment-related issues.

SANTA ROSA — A sharply divided Sonoma County Board of Supervisors last week put off a decision on a proposed countywide project labor agreement policy for public projects of more than $25 million and sent the matter back for further study.

SANTA ROSA — The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday evening agreed to temporarily table talks on a hotly debated proposed countywide project labor agreement policy for public projects of more than $25 million and send the matter back to county staff for further study.

A battle is brewing between big business and labor in Sonoma County over the prospect of the Board of Supervisors possibly adopting a project labor agreement for construction projects of over $25 million.

Amid an uncertain political climate in Washington, estate tax attorneys are urging clients to plan now, before a bevy of favorable rates expire at the end of this year.

Preferential gift and estate tax treatment afforded under current law is set to expire on December 31, 2012. You should consider taking steps now to take advantage of the favorable tax laws before year-end.

Santa Rosa law firm Spaulding McCullough & Tansil, LLP, brought on two new attorneys, Richard Hicks and Jocelyn Yeh Lin.

Bank of Marin has announced several management promotions at its Petaluma offices. …

Smith Dollar PC announced that mortgage banking litigation attorney Rachel Dollar has been named by Super Lawyers as one of the top attorneys in Northern California in 2012. …

American Red Cross has announced changes in the regional leadership team. …

The Sonoma County Section on Aging has appointed the following leadership team officers. …

Windsor-based Sonoma County Vintners Co-op has elected the following officers to its board of directors. …

H.D.D. LLC, owners of VML and Truett Hurst wineries, as well as the Bradford Mountain, Sauvignon Republic and Stonegate brands, announced the appointment of Jim Bielenberg as the company’s CFO. …

Sutter Pacific Medical Foundation announced the addition of Gagik Oganesyan, M.D., Ph.D., a board-certified dermatologist. …

Dr. Anika Sanda recently joined the Novato-based Prima Medical Group, specializing in pediatrics. …

Reflections, a private residential drug and alcohol treatment facility in Novato, named William J. Hanna, Psy.D, as its new clinical director. …

Real estate and corporate attorney Mario Zepponi started Zepponi & Company as a wine industry mergers and acquisitions consulting practice.

Mr. Zepponi will be part of a panel discussion at the Impact Napa 2012 conference the morning of Aug. 30. He spoke with the Business Journal about the rapidly changing landscape for wine M & A.

SANTA ROSA — Recent trends in technology have influenced the continuing evolution of both instruction and infrastructure at the Empire College School of Law, with a library that increasingly leans towards digital options and a newly developed course to consider emerging legal questions.

SANTA ROSA — It surprised backers of the planned runway expansion at Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport when federal wildlife regulators earlier this year said the presence of an endangered flower in the project area might be assumed though not found specifically there in surveys, potentially needing more conservation measures estimated to boost the job cost by at least $10 million and delay it a year.

Western Health Advantage has filed for an expansion of its business into Marin and Sonoma counties, where it hopes to partner with the Marin-Sonoma IPA and much of the region’s hospitals in offering a new health plan for employers and individuals

Though the goals of AB32 are ambitious, the Air Resources Board’s programs to meet those goals will cause significant damage to California’s economy, according to a study done for the California Manufacturers and Technology Association.

Dozens of Wells Fargo Insurance employees in San Francisco and San Carlos have defected to join a newly formed ABD Insurance and Financial Professionals, reclaiming the name and perhaps the culture of an influential brokerage that was acquired by Wells Fargo Insurance Services back in 2007.

As anyone who has been through the process knows, resolving civil disputes through full-blown litigation is enormously expensive, and can take years to complete. For many years, various alternative dispute resolution, or ADR, methods have been used to reduce costs and expedite resolution of civil disputes. The two most-used ADR methods have traditionally been arbitration [...]

SANTA ROSA — The U.S. Justice Department today said it reached a settlement in a lawsuit against the city of Santa Rosa and La Esplanada Unit 1 Owners’ Association over allegations of Fair Housing Act violations.

Insurance carriers and brokers are seeing increased demand in policies specifically tailored to cover an employer in the event of a data breach, a risk that is increasingly common as more and more business moves online for small and large employers alike.

Workers’ compensation insurance rates are continuing to climb upward, as the cost of health care and increasing medical utilization drives up premiums for employers throughout the state, according to brokers in the North Bay.