A former Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control officer who alleged she was forced into disability retirement after being denied accommodations for an on-the-job injury can take her lawsuit to trial, a judge has ruled.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Doreen B. Boxer’s ruling on Thursday comes three years after another judge, Douglas Stern, dismissed plaintiff Sara Berrelleza’s first suit in which she alleged she was sexually harassed by a co-worker and that false complaints the colleague filed against her forced her to accept a demotion out of fear she could lose her job.
In the most recent case, the 48-year-old Berrelleza says she was working as an animal control officer when she slipped on a wet floor at work and fell, hurting her neck and back, on Sept. 23, 2020. The department initially allowed Berrelleza to work part-time, but the next year said there were no such positions available, the suit stated.
Berrelleza offered a seven-day weekly work proposal that accommodated her work restrictions of not working more than six hours daily, but the department stalled on giving her an answer, the suit alleges.
“Ultimately, the department refused to accommodate Berrelleza’s work restrictions on a permanent basis,” according to the complaint, which further states she was forced into disability retirement at age 44, depriving her of potential future income and benefits.
In her ruling, Boxer said the department and the county did not provide any evidence of a hardship were they to accommodate Berrelleza. Trial of the case is scheduled May 5.
In their court papers, county and department attorneys stated that Berrelleza was indeed accommodated and that her work schedule proposal was not realistic.
“Her suggestion that she work for a few hours seven days a week was not feasible as she would never have a day off, her tasks were not performed on weekends and (the department) would have incurred significant overtime to pay for someone to supervise her on the weekend,” the defense lawyers contended in their pleadings.
In her original suit, Berrelleza said she was hired by the department in 2008 and reached the rank of animal control officer III in 2015, the suit stated. She was assigned to the Downey facility when an animal control worker was reassigned there from the Baldwin Park facility in June 2018 because of a sexual harassment complaint made against him there.
Shortly thereafter, the reassigned worker allegedly began making inappropriate remarks to Berrelleza, touched her without permission and stared at her, the suit filed in November 2019 alleged.
An instructor for the county’s sexual harassment training acknowledged the co-worker’s conduct amounted to sexual harassment, the suit stated. But when Berrelleza complained about the man to her immediate supervisor, the boss “quickly cut plaintiff off and abruptly ended the conversation,” the suit stated.