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 has reached a tentative settlement of nearly $100,000 in her lawsuit.
The conditional accord was reached during a mandatory settlement hearing Friday between the parties and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ruth Ann Kwan. The terms call for the county to pay plaintiff Sara Berrelleza $99,990 in exchange for her agreeing to drop her lawsuit. The county will not interfere with Berrelleza’s receipt of disability retirement benefits.
According to her suit, the 48-year-old Berrelleza said 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 proposal that accommodated her restrictions of not working more than six hours daily, but the department stalled on giving her an answer, the suit alleged.
“Ultimately, the department refused to accommodate Berrelleza’s work restrictions on a permanent basis,” according to the complaint, which further stated she was forced into disability retirement at age 44, depriving her of potential future income and benefits.
Berrelleza sued in August 2023, alleging failure to accommodate and engage in the interactive process. In their court papers, county and department attorneys stated Berrelleza was indeed accommodated and that her work schedule proposal was unrealistic.
“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.
The tentative resolution comes three years after another bench officer, Judge Douglas W. Stern, dismissed 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. Stern is now retired.
In her original case, 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 from the Baldwin Park facility in June 2018 because of a sexual harassment complaint made against him.
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.