Gardener’s Ex-Employers Sued for Erasing Evidence : Courts: The videotape lies at the center of a long legal fight over a purported child molestation.

A long-running legal battle over a purported child molestation is set to go to court again Monday with the start of a lawsuit by a gardener accusing his employers of destroying evidence.

In their third court battle, Rony F. Rubio is suing his former employers for erasing a homemade pornographic videotape that was evidence for his defense at an earlier criminal trial.

On Friday, Rubio won a major victory in the 6-year-old conflict when a civil court jury rejected a claim by his boss, a prominent prosecutor living in Orange, that Rubio molested the man’s 7-year-old daughter in the family garage in 1987.

Hyatt Seligman, who once ran for Los Angeles district attorney, said he brought the suit against Rubio in an attempt to vindicate his daughter. Rubio was found not guilty of molesting the girl during a 1990 criminal trial.

“I’m sorry I put my daughter through two weeks of suffering all over again for nothing,” said Seligman, who works in Pomona. “We have been libeled and slandered and painted as caricatures where I’m an evil, revenge-seeking prosecutor and my wife and I are violent, sexual animals.”

The tape lies at the center of the continuing controversy. In 1987, Rubio was working as the Seligman’s live-in gardener when he stumbled on a tape labeled “Superman.” He began watching it and discovered it was actually a 20-minute video of Seligman and his wife, Robin, having sex.

Rubio told police that while he was watching the tape, he saw Seligman’s daughter watching the film through a crack in the door, a claim the daughter admits is true. During the criminal trial, Rubio’s lawyers argued that it was scenes from the film that caused the girl to accuse Rubio of molesting her.

A jury took three hours in February, 1990, to find Rubio not guilty and later, a judge issued Rubio an “an order of factual innocence,” an unusual ruling that caused all criminal documents in the case to be sealed and then destroyed.

But the videotape itself was never viewed by the jury. For several months, the Seligmans fought to prevent its release. But when a judge finally ordered the family to turn it over, Robin Seligman admitted that she had erased it without her husband’s knowledge.

By that time, Rubio had spent 9 1/2 months in jail, during which time he was assaulted by other inmates, said John Barton, Rubio’s attorney.

“He’s hurt and he’s angry,” Barton said. In the suit, scheduled to begin Monday, Rubio seeks $1.5 million from the Seligmans for emotional and mental damages he suffered as a result of the trial and time he spent in jail.

After losing two consecutive lawsuits, Seligman is pessimistic about the upcoming trial, saying that he has been vilified and humiliated by the judicial process.

“All we’ve done is try to protect our daughter,” said Seligman. “This has hurt us very, very badly. It’s Kafkaesque, it’s surreal.”

Barton, too, said he is confident of winning the case and says that a favorable verdict is only fair after all the suffering Rubio has endured.

“This guy has been put through hell,” Barton said.