FILLMORE : Ex-Salesman Sues Firm Over Firing

A former concrete pipe salesman has filed a $26-million lawsuit against a Fillmore manufacturer, alleging he was fired because he revealed that the company sold defective drainage pipes to county and federal governments.

Willard Dobrzensky of Ventura filed the suit Wednesday in Ventura County Superior Court against Hurst Concrete Products, which he said fired him Feb. 28 after employing him for four years.

Hurst General Manager Al Franzen said Friday, “We do not produce substandard material.”

Franzen declined to comment on the suit because he has not seen it and said he prefers that the company make its case in court. But he confirmed that Dobrzensky no longer works at Hurst.

Franzen said Hurst has been supplying pipe and concrete products to the counties of Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Luis Obispo, and the U.S. government since the 1920s.

Dobrzensky’s suit charges that he learned Hurst had been selling substandard and potentially dangerous concrete pipes and vaults to those customers. The suit does not specify how the pipes are substandard nor where or when they were installed.

The suit alleges that Franzen and Hurst administrator Tim Wayment harassed Dobrzensky in an effort to make him quit after he told them that he planned to inform customers that the concrete products were substandard.

Dobrzensky’s suit also alleges that Hurst then fired him without cause, breaching an oral contract he said it made upon hiring him in July, 1986.

The suit alleges that Dobrzensky suffered from attacks of anxiety, nervousness, insomnia, high blood pressure and stress from being harassed.

Dobrzensky and his lawyer, William O’Neill III, could not be reached Friday for comment.