HUNTINGTON BEACH : City Pays $189,000 to Worker It Fired

In an action denounced by the mayor as “a terrible way to spend taxpayer money,” the city has paid nearly $200,000 to settle the case of an employee fired in 1986 from his job in the city Water Department after he suffered major injuries in a workplace accident four years earlier.

The court-ordered settlement included a $100,000 fee to the employee’s attorney, who originally proposed a fee for his services of $45,000.

Orange County Superior Court Referee Greer H. Stroud ruled last September that City Personnel Director William Osness violated employee George L. Eddy’s due-process protection when he terminated Eddy without advance notice and without giving Eddy an opportunity to respond. Stroud awarded Eddy back pay for 1986 through 1990, and the City Council on April 20 voted to pay him $89,000. Eddy claims he is entitled to $123,000, and the difference remains in dispute.

City officials received a second jolt in March when Superior Court Commissioner Eleanor M. Palk awarded $100,000 in legal fees to Eddy’s attorney, Richard J. Silber. The City Council authorized payment on May 18.

Silber said he made a settlement offer with City Atty. Gail Hutton’s office in January for $45,000 in legal fees. The offer was rejected, he said, and the city made a counteroffer of $7,500.

Deputy City Atty. Joe Barron said the two sides each pinned hopes on competing California code sections indicating separate cash awards. The court sided with Silber.

“This is a terrible way to spend taxpayer money,” Mayor Jim Silva said Thursday. “I’ve talked with (City Administrator Michael T. Uberuaga) and he said he’s plugging the loopholes. We have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Eddy, 46, a water systems technician, was injured in June, 1982, when he fell about three feet from the tail-lift of a truck while unloading a 55-gallon oil barrel. He underwent three operations, including reconstruction of his left knee, and continued working in a limited capacity until he was fired in 1986.

The city’s personnel commission and a state-appointed hearing officer upheld the firing after Eddy filed a grievance. Eddy and Silber then went to court and won.

Eddy, who now works as an office manager for a sport fishing business in Newport Beach, said this week that his foremost desire was to continue working for the city but that he was “thrashed” for his efforts.

“Isn’t it ridiculous?” he said. “An employee could go in and punch out a supervisor and have more rights than I did. I was damaged goods. They wanted to cross me off the books.”

Arnold Ross, who in 1986 was vice president of the 450-member Municipal Employees Assn., which joined Eddy in the the suit, said he believes the matter could have been solved at the outset.

“I’m glad that fairness and equity worked out in the end,” Ross said. “If flexibility and reason were shown (by the city) at the beginning, it would have saved lots of money and human suffering.”

Ross said costs are “ungodly” when the city’s expenses for legal work and other costs associated with the dispute are tacked on to the payouts to Eddy and Silber.

Assistant City Administrator Ray Silver said Thursday that officials are in the process of implementing “a very detailed process to be used henceforth” to ensure that similar disputes “don’t get this far and last this long.”