Register Sued by Fired Employee : Court: He claims he was terminated after he alerted his supervisers about an alleged scheme to fraudulently inflate newspaper circulation by dumping unsold copies.

The Orange County Register and its parent corporation have been sued by a former employee who claims that he was fired after he “blew the whistle” on an allegedly fraudulent scheme to inflate the newspaper’s circulation.

Woodrow W. Combs Jr., a six-year Register employee, said in a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court that he was terminated after he alerted his supervisors about “ ‘trash-can circulation,’ which involved the dumping of vast quantities of newspapers by defendants who then manipulated and inflated the Register’s circulation.”

Though an independent audit last year found discrepancies in the Register’s circulation figures, the paper has denied accusations of wrongdoing.

Dick Wallace, the Register’s general manager, refused comment on Combs’ suit after the filing.

“I have not read the suit,” Wallace said. “I can’t comment on its specifics.”

The Register, according to the lawsuit, said Combs was dismissed because of “financial misconduct.”

Steven R. Pingel, Combs’ attorney, said that his client never did anything wrong and that the Register fabricated a charge against Combs to get rid of him.

The Register challenged Combs’ application for unemployment insurance because of “alleged dishonesty.”

Records in the lawsuit, however, reveal that the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board ruled Combs had simply misplaced receipts from certain newspaper coin racks.

“This would indicate an error in judgment rather than disregard of your interests,” the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board decided.

Combs, 49, of Temecula, specifically charges that Register employees routinely trashed newspapers they couldn’t sell and then increased the number of readers reported to advertisers.

Combs in the lawsuit said he was aware of employees’ “hawking newspapers at the high school football games and the most (they) could sell” was 28 of 500 copies.

The Register--which once billed itself as “the fastest-growing newspaper in the nation”--revised its circulation for the six-month period ended March 31, 1991, from 372,750 down to 354,843 after an industry trade group noted certain discrepancies.

Last September, the Register dismissed its two top circulation officials. Both men are named in Combs’ suit.