A woman has reached a tentative settlement in her lawsuit against Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in which she alleged she was wrongfully fired for complaining about a supervisor’s illegal recording of employee conversations as well as the same boss’ inappropriate disbursement of a controlled substance.
Plaintiff Lin Nguyen’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleged discrimination, whistleblower retaliation and harassment, as well as a failure to prevent all three, plus wrongful termination and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
On Friday, Nguyen’s attorneys filed court papers with Judge Teresa Beaudet notifying her of a “conditional” resolution of the case with the expectation a request for dismissal will be filed by March 30.
No terms were revealed.
In their previous court papers, Kaiser attorneys denied Nguyen’s allegations and said the plaintiff was fired for “repeated dishonesty and policy violations” and that instead of acknowledging responsibility for her actions, she asserted “a litany of claims which have no support in the evidentiary record.”
According to her lawsuit, Nguyen dedicated over a decade of her life to Kaiser, working her way up to a pharmacy supervisor position in October 2017, and regularly received positive performance reviews.
In June 2019, the Baldwin Park Kaiser facility’s outpatient pharmacy director retired and his replacement recorded Nguyen’s workplace conversations, including one in October of that year when a co-worker told the plaintiff about an anticipated promotion of someone else within their office, the suit stated.
The pharmacy director later sought to find out who leaked the information about the anticipated promotion, confronting Nguyen’s co-worker with a recording of the conversation between Nguyen and her colleague, an action that left the plaintiff upset about eavesdropping actions she considered were done “surreptitiously and illegally,” the suit stated.
Nguyen complained about the alleged secret recordings to the appropriate department, but an ensuing investigation brought the plaintiff no satisfaction, according to the suit.
The pharmacy director subsequently called for a meeting with Nguyen and questioned the plaintiff about whether she had backdated records or forced others to do so, an accusation Nguyen contend was “demonstrably false,” the suit stated.
Nguyen also reported what she considered an inappropriate disbursement of a controlled substance medication, the suit stated. But instead an investigation being opened, Nguyen was asked by a manager, “So you are now on their bad side, so you start complaining?,” the suit stated.
Nguyen’s doctor placed her on medical leave because of the workplace stress she allegedly was enduring, according to the suit. When she returned she asked the pharmacy director for temporary reduced work hours because she “always felt anxious that someone was trying to get her,” according to the suit, which further stated that the plaintiff suffered a severe panic attack during the meeting.
In March 2022, while working the 3-day weekly schedule, Nguyen allegedly was confronted by the pharmacy director about longtime alleged fraud regarding continuing education units.
Although Nguyen was able to refute the allegation, the pharmacy director fired her three months later, the suit filed in June 2024 stated.