San Diego : Notes Destroyed in Sex Scandal Case

An attorney hired by San Diego City Council to investigate a City Hall sex scandal last year testified in federal court Tuesday that he destroyed his notes to protect the identities of the employees involved.

Josiah Neeper said he got rid of the documents in order to abide by the confidentiality clause mandated in a settlement that had been secretly negotiated by several city officials.

Neeper, an attorney in the San Diego law firm of Gray, Cary, Ames & Frye, was hired in May, 1991, to look into the details of a sexual harassment claim involving then-Planning Director Robert Spaulding and one of the planners in his office, Susan Bray.

Neeper’s testimony came on the third day of a civil trial in which Bray is seeking millions of dollars from the city because details of her settlement were made public.

Neeper collected information on Bray’s sexual harassment claim, including notes he made as a result of interviews with city employees involved in negotiating the $100,000 out-of-court settlement.

He testified that he destroyed the information after he submitted his report to the City Council and the mayor three weeks after the scandal became public.

“No. 1, it was a dead file, and I regularly get rid of unnecessary elements of a dead file,” Neeper said. “No. 2, I kept the important information contained in my report.”

Because Bray’s settlement required confidentiality, Neeper said, he did not share any information he gathered with any of his colleagues, and he destroyed the information as soon as he finished his report.

“I did not want anything I had to get to the media through a leak so I kept my work very private,” he said.

Bray’s attorney, Frank Rogozienski, noted that Neeper’s investigation took place after the settlement had been reported in the media and asked Neeper why standard security measures at his law firm would not be sufficient to keep the Bray file private.

Neeper responded that he took extraordinary steps in an effort to “maximize confidentiality.”