Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Laguna Beach Employee Are Rejected : Litigation: City says it took action on plaintiff’s complaints. She says stress and hostile environment forced her to leave. She is now a waitress.

The city Thursday formally rejected allegations in a lawsuit by a former employee who claims that she was repeatedly sexually harassed by co-workers and that her superiors would not help when she complained.

In the lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court last month, Marion L. Roubanis contends that stress and a hostile environment caused her to eventually leave her job with the city’s Municipal Services Department.

The city’s response, filed Thursday, stated that city employees “took immediate and effective action every time (Roubanis) lodged a complaint” and that “she was offered other employment opportunities in the city, which she rejected,” according to David C. Larsen, an attorney for Laguna Beach.

He said the response “constitutes a denial to the allegations of the complaint.”

Roubanis alleges in her suit that male co-workers urged her to look at nude magazine pictures, to discuss her sex life and to wear tight clothing. It also claims that co-workers refused to remove photos of nude women that Roubanis found offensive.

City Manager Kenneth C. Frank has said that some employees were disciplined because of Roubanis’ allegations but that all still work for the city.

“The city has in place, and has had for some time, a policy against sexual harassment,” Larsen said. “The city does not condone sexual harassment. To the degree she did bring complaints to the city, they were always acted on.”

Roubanis, 24, worked for the city from June, 1989, until February, 1992, washing and fueling buses and inspecting police vehicles, among other duties. She was the only woman working in the department’s garage area behind City Hall.

The Lake Forest resident alleges that she was harassed by about six male co-workers and that she was repeatedly rebuffed when she went to her superiors for help. The suit also claims that a city mechanic rubbed against Roubanis several times, touched his crotch as he talked to her and that he put his dirty underwear in her locker.

Roubanis, who now works as a waitress, said Personnel Officer Philip Hofmann told her that she had no rights as a part-time employee and that City Manager Frank told her she should expect such behavior in “a blue-collar environment,” a charge Frank called “total nonsense.”

Frank has also said he responded immediately when Roubanis complained to him about a picture of a woman in a bathing suit on the wall in the Parks Department.

Since December, 1991, the city has had a formal policy regarding various types of harassment, Frank said. All employees receive copies of the written policy, which defines harassment and tells employees how to report it, he said.

In addition, all management and supervisorial employees received special training about a year ago on how to handle sexual harassment complaints, according to Frank.

Neither Roubanis nor her attorney could be reached for comment Thursday.