A former Monterey Park Fire Department division chief has dropped his lawsuit in which he alleged he was forced to resign in 2023 from his job as a division chief at age 63 because of persistent age discrimination by the then-fire chief, who the plaintiff contended used the 2023 mass shooting in the city as part of the chief’s effort to get him to leave.
In his Los Angeles Superior Court complaint, Mark Steven Khail contended that then-Chief Matthew Hallock asked him when he planned to retire and that the chief also believed that older workers like the plaintiff were “taking up space. On Friday, Khail’s attorneys filed court papers with Judge Joseph Lipner asking that the case be dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be refiled.
The court papers do not state if a settlement was reached or if Khail is not pursuing the case for other reasons. However, in May the city made Khail a $150,000 statutory settlement offer.
In their previous court papers, attorneys for the city denied any wrongdoing on the part of the San Gabriel Valley municipality.
Khail, now 65, was hired by the city in March 1981. He later was put in charge of training recruits and daily MPFD operations
According to Khail’s suit filed in November 2023, the plaintiff believed that Hallock “embarked on a course of conduct designed to force plaintiff to leave the MPFD because of plaintiff’s age” and that the alleged conduct was “pervasive and occurred almost daily.”
Khail contended that it was believed internally that his removal from the arson investigation team was done as part of an effort to force him to retire. Khail also maintained that Hallock repeatedly asked him when he planned to retire, including once in front of other department members during a 2021 command staff meeting.
Frustrated that Khail would not retire, Hallock put Khail on administrative leave in January 2023, using as an excuse the plaintiff’s actions during the mass shooting in the city in which 11 people were killed and nine were injured, the suit stated. However, Khail was never provided with a list of what he had allegedly done wrong, according to his complaint.
Khail twice tried to call Hallock during the shooting response, but the number, the same the department’s communications center had, was incorrect, according to the suit.
Khail suffered emotional distress and post-traumatic stress disorder from the mass shooting, but was unable to get counseling while on leave, according to the suit, which further stated that the plaintiff was effectively forced out of the department in February 2023 and has suffered a substantial loss of income.
Hallock left the MPFD in January 2024 to take a similar post with the city of Santa Monica. The current MPFD chief is Jason Hing.