A jury resumes deliberating Wednesday in the trial of a whistleblower lawsuit in which a Los Angeles city auditor contends she was bypassed for special investigator positions in a backlash for reporting what she believed was unlawful activity.
Plaintiff Soledad Gomez contended she discovered the alleged wrongdoing during her 2019 temporary appointment as a special investigator in the City Controller’s Office. The Los Angeles Superior Court panel pondered the case for a brief time on Tuesday after hearing final arguments and will continue its deliberations Wednesday.
Attorneys for the city stated in their court papers that Gomez performed “routine investigative work” and that the Controller’s Office, Ethics Commission and City Attorney’s Office all had legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for selecting candidates other than the plaintiff for the positions for which she applied.
“Even if plaintiff could establish protected activity, she presented no substantial evidence that the City’s Controller’s Office declined to offer her a permanent position because of it,” the city’s lawyers contend. “To the contrary, the evidence showed that the city itself authorized referral of her findings from her investigation of (the) DWP to the FBI, undermining any inference of retaliatory animus.”
But in pretrial ruling denying the city’s motion to dismiss Gomez’s single claim for whistleblower retaliation, Judge Dean Kitchens wrote that the city had not shown by “clear and convincing...
exporters knowingly avoided U. S. duties on Asian and European flat-rolled steel products, agreeing to pay $19 million to resolve the dispute, according to a press release issued Wednesday by the U...