Court Awards $788,000 to Whistle-Blower

A Superior Court jury Tuesday awarded $788,000 to a government whistle-blower, ruling that the former Orange County Sanitation Districts employee was fired for helping state and local authorities investigate unsafe conditions and other problems at the agency.

Former lab manager Louis Sangermano, 48, claimed that his trouble with the agency began as soon as he contacted outside investigators about a 1994 fire that killed two workers at the Huntington Beach sewage treatment plant. Sangermano simultaneously reported alleged corruption at the agency to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Agency officials alleged that Sangermano was fired for sexually harassing several female employees.

But the jury came down Tuesday in Sangermano’s favor, marking a defeat in a lengthy legal battle that has shadowed the sanitation agency since the sewage plant blast.

“How do we know he was terminated for whistle-blowing?” Greg K. Hafif, Sangermano’s attorney, asked the jury during closing arguments Monday. “Because he stood in the doorway and they called [that] sexual harassment. Nobody would fire anyone on such absurd grounds.”

Hafif argued that the sexual harassment allegations were questionable because none was filed until after the whistle-blowing was out in the open.

He added that some of the complaints, including one in which a female employee said she felt harassed when Sangermano told her she was hanging Christmas tree lights improperly, did not constitute harassment.

In a statement released Tuesday, the agency affirmed its position that Sangermano was fired for harassment.

Sangermano testified that he contacted the district attorney in early 1994 to report that then-General Manager of the Sanitation Districts, J. Wayne Sylvester, had accepted illegal gifts of meals from one of the district’s contracting companies.

Sylvester paid a $1,750 civil fine in 1995 after he was accused in a lawsuit of violating the 1974 Political Reform Act because he accepted more than $250 worth of work-related meals from the engineering firm.

Sangermano also said he turned to the Cal/OSHA to report a cover-up of safety conditions after the 1994 fire at the sewage treatment plant.

Joe Patterson and Robin Miller, employees of an Ontario-based engineering firm, died in the flash fire.

After he blew the whistle, Sangermano said, he tried to return from a medical leave to his $85,000-a-year job. But, he said, agency officials refused to allow him back, locking him out of his laboratory and recoding his office telephone number.

After the blaze, Cal/OSHA issued serious safety-code sanctions against the Sanitation Districts and the Ontario-based firm where the two men had worked. The state agency also conducted a criminal investigation and turned results over to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Although no criminal charges were ever filed against the districts regarding a cover-up, two Cal/OSHA investigators, William Loupe and Sylvia Riley, testified during the Sangermano case they believed the districts withheld evidence during the investigation.

The sanitation agency has denied responsibility for the blaze.

However, agency officials agreed to settle wrongful death claims with the families of the dead workers last September rather than face “the uncertainty of a jury trial,” the joint chairman of the districts’ board said then. The terms of the settlements were not disclosed.

Sangermano could not be reached for comment Tuesday, but one of his attorneys, Cynthia Hafif, said he feels vindicated by the jury’s decision.

“The fact that their lies are now proven to be lies makes him feel good,” Hafif said, “but he is emotionally drained.”

Greg and Cynthia Hafif also represented the families of Patterson and Miller, killed in the fire.