Ex-Transit Official Wins Suit : Award: Jury orders L.A. county to pay $518,000 to a man who said he lost his job because he had uncovered misdeeds by contractors.

A former county transit official has been awarded $518,000 by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury after a trial on his lawsuit alleging that he was fired for trying to ferret out contracting irregularities.

Robert S. Inouye, whose job at the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission was to make sure that contractors complied with affirmative action and labor laws, lost his position in June, 1990. Inouye alleged that his superiors fired him in part because he had gone to the district attorney’s office in December, 1989, with allegations that one contractor was not a bona fide minority firm and that another also committed irregularities.

Inouye’s employers learned of his whistle-blowing when a district attorney’s investigator wrote a letter to the commission in March, 1990, reporting the allegations.

After six days of deliberation, the jury voted 9 to 3 to award Inouye $418,000 for lost earnings and benefits and $100,000 for emotional distress.

“This sends a message to the public and to all these agencies,” said Inouye’s lawyer, Brian M. Brown of Santa Ana. “He got fired for trying to make sure the laws were complied with.”

Lawyers representing the transit agency--which merged last year with the regional bus agency to form the Metropolitan Transportation Authority--said in closing arguments that Inouye lost his position because of a general reorganization, not out of retaliation. They could not be reached for comment after the jury’s Friday verdict.

Inouye, who worked five years at the commission, had sought $3.6 million at his trial, overseen by Superior Court Commissioner Emilie H. Elias.

“I think the (transit agency) really dodged a bullet,” Brown said. “The jury could have hit them real big.”