The city of Pleasanton scored a major legal victory Tuesday when a judge dismissed the lawsuit brought by a former employee over his firing in 2023, finding the allegations of whistleblower retaliation and age discrimination didn’t hold water.
In a written decision issued late in the morning, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jenna Whitman confirmed the direction she took in a tentative ruling last week on the city’s motion for summary judgment to have the civil case brought by former utilities manager Dan Repp tossed before a jury trial.
“Many of Plaintiff’s purportedly ‘illegal reasons’ for termination are not tied to any evidence, and none appear to relate to the alleged protected activity,” Whitman wrote midway through her nine-page ruling.
Pleasanton City Manager Gerry Beaudin, whose decision to fire Repp in June 2023 after a workplace misconduct investigation was placed under the microscope in pre-trial depositions and pleadings, declined to comment on the win in court when contacted by the Pleasanton Weekly on Tuesday.
Repp plans to appeal the ruling, his attorney Judith Wolff confirmed to the Weekly without offering further comment about the case.
The two-year legal battle began in the months after Repp, the city’s managing director of utilities and environmental services since June 2020, was fired by Beaudin in the wake of a third-party investigation into a complaint that Repp created a hostile work environment.
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