Fired City Employee Awarded Millions

A federal court jury Thursday ordered the city of Los Angeles to pay $3.6 million to a longtime city employee who was fired after giving key testimony against the city in a costly police overtime case.

After just more than four hours of deliberation, the eight-person jury also found Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and Cmdr. Daniel Watson, the department’s ombudsman, personally liable for $500,000 and $250,000, respectively, in punitive damages.

“I am very happy,” plaintiff Theresa Schell, a former fiscal services specialist for the LAPD, said after the verdict was announced. “I am happy [because] this sends a clear message to the department . . . that it cannot retaliate against employees for truthful testimony.”

Schell, who worked for the city for 29 years, contended that the department retaliated against her for her role in a lawsuit that the city settled for $40 million, the largest settlement in city history.

Deputy City Atty. Katrina Campbell declined to comment. Her co-counsel, Gerald Sato, refused to answer questions about the verdict.

An LAPD spokesman said Parks was unavailable for comment. “But we stand by our position that there was no retaliation against the employee, that she was terminated for cause,” Sgt. John Pasquariello said.

“Chief Parks has not met with the city attorney but certainly will explore the option of an appeal. And it is important to note that often these cases get a lot of press when they are awarded. However, on appeal, the department and the city often have these verdicts overturned.”

Schell, 48, was fired by the LAPD just days before last Christmas amid an internal investigation over whether she had accessed confidential Police Commission documents on a departmental computer.

The longtime LAPD employee always maintained that the investigation and her firing were prompted by her testimony in the overtime case that was settled early last year.

In that class-action case, which spanned years, attorneys representing hundreds of LAPD officers argued that the department improperly delayed paying the officers overtime stemming from their work in the city’s 1992 riots.

During the eight-day trial of Schell’s lawsuit, held before U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, Schell’s attorney, Dan Stormer, argued that his client’s reassignment and subsequent firing resulted from her testimony in the police overtime case.

With an “exemplary record,” Stormer said, Schell worked her way up from a clerk typist with the city to a job with the LAPD where she oversaw the computer process for maintenance and retrieval of payroll information.

In was in that capacity, Stormer argued, that Schell’s knowledge and integrity only served to get her fired by the department.

During the protracted police overtime litigation, he told the jury, Schell said in a sworn deposition that the data sought by attorneys for the officers could be retrieved from the LAPD’s payroll records.

That revelation--which contradicted earlier testimony from other LAPD personnel--was described as a turning point in the police overtime case, said Stormer. His evidence included one city document in which an outside attorney hired by the city worried Schell might “blow the city’s case.”

After her deposition, Stormer said, Schell received a favorable performance review from the department in March 1999. But, two months later, he said, she received a less favorable review and was reassigned, purportedly on the basis of a 2-year-old gender discrimination complaint she had filed against a former supervisor.

“They sent two armed officers to remove her to another division,” Stormer said. “And once she was there, she had basically nothing to do for the next 10 months.

“The department claimed they moved her for her own good. We found evidence that they moved her in retaliation for not changing her testimony,” Stormer said. “And the jury found against the department on both issues.”

Added Schell: “The most gratifying element is that even though these powerful people . . . came after me and pressured me to change my testimony, my convictions were that no matter what they said or did, I was not going to shade the truth or perjure myself.

“I feel strongly about what I did,” she said. “But I want all employees to know that they shouldn’t be fearful to tell the truth against anybody.”