Two attorneys who sued Orange County alleging sexual harassment involving a former high-ranking prosecutor have agreed to $925,000 settlements of their claims, County Counsel Leon Page announced Tuesday.
Orange County supervisors voted 3-2 on Feb. 24 to approve $925,000 apiece for Deputy District Attorney Mallory Miller and former prosecutor Shabnum Azizi, who now works as an attorney for San Diego. Supervisors Don Wagner and Janet Nguyen voted against the settlement offers.
That leaves three more plaintiffs awaiting trial for their harassment claims, including one attorney who alleged racial harassment. The settlement offers came soon after Deputy District Attorney Bethel Cope-Vega won a $3.5 million verdict against the county last month.
Cope-Vega’s victory followed 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 $11.1 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.
Cope-Vega said in her lawsuit that 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.