Orange County supervisors next week are scheduled to privately discuss a $3.5 million verdict this week against the county stemming from harassment claims involving a former high-ranking prosecutor, as board leaders voiced concern about mounting legal costs with multiple related cases still pending.
Jurors in San Diego County deliberated for about a total of one day before reaching verdicts on 11 questions with the panel unanimous on 10 and 9-3 in favor of the plaintiff Deputy District Attorney Bethel Cope-Vega on one and 11-1 in her favor on another.
Cope-Vega’s legal victory trails a triumph for Tracy Miller last year in her lawsuit against the county, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer and his former top assistant, Shawn Nelson — now an Orange County Superior Court judge. Miller, who won a $3 million verdict and $1.5 million in attorneys fees, said she was forced to retire due to retaliation for moving to protect whistleblowers alleging harassment from former prosecutor Gary LoGalbo, who retired during an investigation of the claims and has since died.
Still to be determined is how much money in attorneys fees Cope-Vega will receive. But given settlements for two other plaintiffs amounting to a total of $1.3 million, that brings the total losses for the county to $9.3 million with five more lawsuits still awaiting trial.
It is unknown how much the firm representing the county, Sheppard-Mullin, has billed the county.
The county’s risk-assessment attorneys had negotiated a settlement for about $6 million that would have resolved all of the cases, but the Board of Supervisors rejected it in August 2021 and hired Sheppard-Mullin to defend the county.
The cases were all moved to San Diego because of Spitzer’s status as Orange County’s top prosecutor and Nelson’s position on the Orange County bench.
“These are cases I inherited,” board Vice Chairwoman Katrina Foley told City News Service. “They were already existing when I joined the board, and I have consistently said we have a high risk on these cases and that we need to resolve them informally, and we need to change the way we handle our employment personnel matters with the District Attorney’s Office.”
Foley, who is an employee rights attorney, supported moving the district attorney’s human relations office to the central county human relations department.
“That’s something I had been asking for for a long time,” Foley said. “We also set up an ability for people to make anonymous complaints, which was not part of our policies. I feel very strongly that we have to take seriously complaints of harassment in the workplace and we have to have a working environment where people don’t feel they’re being assaulted, threatened, or suffering any kind of retaliation in their job.”
Foley hopes the county will pursue mediation or a global settlement of the remaining claims.
“Some of these (plaintiffs) still work for us,” Foley said. “We want them to have closure. The guy was reprehensible, and I feel like anyone who tried to say they didn’t know maybe wasn’t paying attention.”
Board Chairman Doug Chaffee noted that Spitzer was a damaging witness for the county in Cope-Vega’s lawsuit. He said jurors apparently did not find Spitzer credible.
“This guy, LoGalbo, was at one time his best friend, his best man at his wedding, so for him to then deny that he didn’t know about the guy’s character, well, he loses credibility when he does that. I don’t know how to solve that if another trial comes along,” Chaffee said.
On the other hand, Chaffee said the county’s attorneys believe “there may have been errors” in testimony allowed in the trial, and that it could help bolster an appeal to overturn the verdicts.
“We’ll see where that goes when we get our briefing” in private session Tuesday, Chaffee said.
In Cope-Vega’s trial, there was evidence that a heart condition was aggravated by the harassment that apparently swayed jurors, Chaffee said.
“All of these cases have different facts, so it’s hard to judge in the future” how the county’s defense will stand up, Chaffee said.
“I don’t know what to do regarding Spitzer,” Chaffee said. “He’s an elected leader so we can’t do much with him.”
Chaffee said, “There’s some negotiation that can still happen… I’m looking for more information. But I am concerned about the remaining cases. Though each of them have to be looked at separately.”
Supervisor Don Wagner told City News Service that it was “premature for any of us to say what we’ll do” going forward.
“It’s all very tentative,” he said. “I haven’t seen any analysis from our lawyers. But my preliminary understanding is there are some issues for an appeal.”
Wagner, however, acknowledged, “It costs money to appeal, and if you win you’re right back in the trial court. But if we can win an appeal and can get the numbers down, it may affect any settlement in those cases.”
Wagner also said it appears Spitzer’s testimony has hurt the county’s defense when he claims he wasn’t aware of the harassment.
“They’re not believing Todd,” Wagner said.
Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento declined to discuss how he thinks the county should move forward regarding the remaining cases. But he was critical of Spitzer’s handling of the harassment.
“This most recent jury award against the District Attorney’s Office and its leadership highlights the high cost the taxpayers bear as a result of the toxic environment experienced in that office,” Sarmiento said in a statement.
“Clearly, there is a price to be paid in employee safety, morale, and performance when employees are harassed in the workplace and worried about retaliation on the job.
Though the conduct at the center of this case took place before my election to the board, I have supported changes to the department, including removing HR functions from the DA, and I remain open to further action by the board.”
Supervisor Janet Nguyen declined comment.
Attorney Matt Murphy, a former prosecutor for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, said the county’s attorneys have not made any good-faith efforts to resolve the cases. He noted that one of the first things the county’s attorneys did in the cases was move to force the plaintiffs to have their names be put on the record, which was later reversed by the current judge overseeing the trials in San Diego County.
“LoGalbo’s actions were terrible, but the way the county has treated these women ever since has been even worse. The harm is ongoing,” Murphy said. “The board has rebuffed every good-faith effort we have made to resolve these cases, it has already cost them millions, and with five more trials on deck, we are just getting started. This has been awful for my clients, and it sucks for the taxpayers of Orange County.”
Cope-Vega said, “Having to sue the job I continue to love has been heartbreaking. This was never about money for me or the other victims. It has always been about standing up to injustice and doing what is right.”
Vega said in the lawsuit she worked next to LoGalbo’s office and was “exposed to inappropriate sexually harassing comments on a daily basis, all of which created a hostile and offensive work environment.”
She accused LoGalbo of “leering” at her “to the point where coworkers would notice.”
She said he would comment on her clothing and tell her “he knew the color of her underwear,” and that he would dream of her in the nude.
LoGalbo would call her at night to ask her what she was wearing, she alleged in the suit.