A judge has dismissed the claims of the last of four Department of Water and Power employees who originally sued their employer, alleging labor law violations and sexual harassment in the workplace.
Chris Vicino, the former DWP director of security and emergency management, contended in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that DWP Board President Cynthia McClain-Hill sexually harassed him and that he was fired in 2023 when he complained. Judge Barbara A. Meiers heard arguments March 13 on the DWP’s motion to dismiss Vicino’s allegations, took the case under submission and granted the DWP’s dismissal motion on Tuesday.
In his court papers, Vicino said he was a well-respected employee up until 2016, but that at age 62 he was “unceremoniously fired” by way of a memo in an envelope left on his door at his house.
Vicino further contends that while he was in Israel to attend a cybersecurity conference, he got onto an elevator occupied by McClain-Hill. He alleged she made a “predatory gaze up and down his body” while saying, “Don’t you look good in your tight little suit.”
“Mr. Vicino believed that she was coming onto him in an unwanted sexual proposition and immediately exited the elevator,” Vicino’s court papers stated.
When McClain-Hill learned of Vicino’s complaints, she “embarked on a pattern of retaliation that spanned several years” until Vicino was fired in March 2023 and replaced by a Vicino subordinate who was much younger.
But in her ruling, the judge said there is “no evidence whatsoever that demonstrates any continuing acts of sexual harassment — only the single elevator incident — if that could be deemed to be such…”
Meiers further wrote that while it is true that one act of sexual harassment can be so severe as to cause a continuing hostile environment, that act must be “serious and severe.”
“A single casual comment made by one employee in passing in an elevator about four years before an adverse job action is not enough to establish this basis for recovery as a matter of law,” the judge said.
The other plaintiffs — Arlene Rodriguez, Leticia Woodard and Clariza Valdovinos — previously dropped out of the case originally filed in October 2023.