A woman who contends in a lawsuit that a female team security guard patted her down in an inappropriate way at Dodger Stadium in 2022 says in new court papers that the guard later asked the plaintiff’s son if his mother enjoyed being searched in that manner.
Liza Danielle Gomez is seeking to remove a civil right violation allegation from her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit and add one of sexual harassment against the Los Angeles Dodgers LLC, the guard and a second Dodger employee. The original suit, filed in October 2022, also includes causes of action for assault, sexual battery, negligence and false imprisonment.
In a sworn declaration filed attached to her motion to amend the lawsuit filed Wednesday with Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis in advance of a June 6 hearing, Gomez says events unfolded when she was entering Dodger Stadium with her son on Oct. 4, 2022, to see the home team play the Colorado Rockies. She says an attendant told her to take a vape battery found on the plaintiff back to her car.
Gomez says she threw the battery away and entered successfully, but that the attendant told the guard to search her anyway. The guard got “very intimate” when doing so by rubbing her hands over the plaintiff’s private areas, according to Gomez.
“I felt humiliated and began to get very fearful,” Gomez says. “Her touching was beyond a pat down. She told me that if I did not let her touch me, I would not be allowed into Dodger Stadium to attend the baseball game. I became very fearful when she told me that.”
Gomez says she felt embarrassed, humiliated, anxious, fearful and emotionally distressed” after the search concluded and further says that after she was allowed into the venue, filed a complaint against the guard with a manager.
Later, Gomez and her son went to a concession area to buy drinks, and the guard, recognizing the plaintiff’s son, asked him if his mother enjoyed being touched by the guard, according to Gomez, who does not state her son’s age.
“This was extremely humiliating, I felt fearful that she would touch me again,” Gomez says.
Gomez, who says she filed a report with Los Angeles police three days after the game, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages in her proposed amended complaint.
In their previous court papers, Dodger attorneys deny Gomez’s allegations and cite multiple defenses, including assumption of the risk and reasonable force used in self-defense.