Ronald Hittle was an at-will employee of the City of Stockton and served as the City’s Fire Chief from 2005 through 2011.

In May 2010, the City received an anonymous letter purporting to be from an employee of the Stockton Fire Department. The letter described Hittle as a “corrupt, racist, lying, religious fanatic who should not be allowed to continue as the Fire Chief of Stockton.” The source of this information was not an anonymous individual, but later established as a high-ranking Fire Department manager.

The City hired an outside independent investigator, Trudy Largent, to investigate various allegations of misconduct. In a 250-page report referencing over 50 exhibits, Largent sustained almost all of the allegations of misconduct against Hittle. This investigation ultimately led to his termination by the City.

Largent’s Report specifically concluded that Hittle: (1) lacked effectiveness and judgment in his ongoing leadership of the Fire Department; (2) used City time and a City vehicle to attend a religious event, and approved on-duty attendance of other Fire Department managers to do the same; (3) failed to properly report his time off; (4) engaged in potential favoritism of certain Fire Department employees based on a financial conflict of interest not disclosed to the City; (5) endorsed a private consultant’s business in violation of City policy; and (6) had potentially conflicting loyalties in his management role and responsibilities, including Hittle’s relationship with the head of the local firefighters’ union.

Hittle sued the City, former City Manager Robert Deis, and former Deputy City Manager Laurie Montes claiming that his termination was in fact the result of unlawful employment discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. Hittle alleged that Deis and Montes terminated his employment as Fire Chief “based upon his religion.”

Defendants moved for summary judgment seeking dismissal of all of Hittle’s claims. Hittle subsequently cross-moved for partial summary judgment as to his federal and state religious discrimination claims on April 1, 2021. On March 1, 2022, the district court denied Hittle’s motion and granted Defendants’ motion as to all of Hittle’s claims. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in the published case of Hittle v City of Stockton -22-15485 (August 2023).

The panel held that, in analyzing employment discrimination claims under Title VII and the California FEHA, the court may use the McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green burden-shifting framework – 411 U.S. 792 (1973) – under which the plaintiff must establish a prima facie case of discrimination.

The burden then shifts to the defendant to articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the challenged actions.

Finally, the burden returns to the plaintiff to show that the proffered nondiscriminatory reason is pretextual. Alternatively, the plaintiff may prevail on summary judgment by showing direct or circumstantial evidence of discrimination.

Hittle was required to show that his religion was “a motivating factor” in defendants’ decision to fire him with respect to his federal claims, and that his religion was “a substantial motivating factor” with respect to his FEHA claims.

The panel concluded that Hittle failed to present sufficient direct evidence of discriminatory animus in defendants’ statements and the City’s notice of intent to remove him from City service. And Hittle also failed to present sufficient specific and substantial circumstantial evidence of religious animus by defendants. On summary judgment, circumstantial evidence of discrimination “must be ‘specific’ and ‘substantial'”

“The district court’s grant of summary judgment in defendants’ favor was appropriate where defendants’ legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for firing Hittle were sufficient to rebut his evidence of discrimination, and he failed to persuasively argue that these non-discriminatory reasons were pretextual.”

Cal/OSHA and the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) encourage California’s employers and workers to commit to workplace safety and health during Safe + Sound Week from August 7-13.

Register your commitment to safety with Cal/OSHA for Safe + Sound Week. Those who register will join the thousands of businesses around the country showing their commitment to workplace safety and will have their workplace listed as a participant. This year’s program will provide resources for businesses on mental health and well-being.

The benefits of participating in Safe + Sound Week include enhanced safety and health at work sites with effective safety programs to identify and address potential hazards before an injury or illness occurs; improved employee well-being and morale that increases business productivity; cost savings that proactive safety measures provide to reduce medical costs, workers’ compensation claims and potential losses associated with downtime and productivity disruptions; and increased awareness on best safety practices to help prevent work-related accidents, injuries and illnesses.

Show that you and your group lead on safety as a core value by supporting Safe + Sound Week through the communication channels or social media platforms you use with the hashtag #SafeandSoundWeek. Cal/OSHA and DIR are participating in a West Coast Challenge again this year with Oregon and Washington. The three state leaders have posted a video issuing a challenge to each other in a friendly competition to see which of the three states has the highest ratio of businesses registered.

Cal/OSHA helps protect workers in California from health and safety hazards on the job. Cal/OSHA’s jurisdiction to conduct workplace safety and health inspections extends to almost every workplace in California, with few exceptions for workplaces covered by federal agencies. Employers who have questions or need assistance with workplace health and safety programs can call Cal/OSHA’s Consultation Services Branch at 800-963-9424.

Workers in California are protected regardless of immigration status. Workers who have questions about safety and health in the workplace can call 833-579-0927 to speak with a live bilingual Cal/OSHA representative between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. Complaints about workplace safety and health hazards can be filed confidentially with Cal/OSHA district offices.

The former president and CEO of a Whittier medical clinic pleaded guilty to submitting fraudulent billings to a Medi-Cal health care program that provides family planning services to low-income Californians without health insurance.

Vincenzo Rubino, 58, of Valencia, pleaded guilty to nine counts of health care fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft in the middle of his federal criminal trial, in which the prosecution had nearly concluded its case.

According to evidence presented at trial, Rubino founded, owned and operated Santa Maria’s Children and Family Center, a Whittier-based medical clinic registered as a non-profit public benefit corporation and enrolled as a Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment (Family PACT) provider run through Medi-Cal.

From November 2014 to August 2017, Santa Maria’s submitted fraudulent claims totaling nearly $5 million to the Family PACT program for family planning services that were never provided, often using the information of patients who were recruited at off-site locations with offers of free diabetes testing, but who in fact never received the examinations and other services.

To submit many of these claims, Rubino used the names of two medical providers whom the patients did not see and who did not even work for Santa Maria’s at the time — a physician’s assistant and an elderly doctor who was himself a patient in a skilled nursing facility during much of the scheme.

The Medi-Cal program paid more than $2.3 million dollars on the fraudulent claims, as well as an additional approximately $1.5 million to a pharmacy and laboratory stemming from referrals based on the same services that were never delivered.

United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II scheduled a sentencing hearing for January 22, 2024, at which time Rubino will face up to 10 years in federal prison for each health care fraud count, and a mandatory sentence of two years in federal prison consecutive to the other sentences for each aggravated identity theft count.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and the California Department of Justice investigated this matter.

After a two-month trial, this week a jury awarded former UC San Diego oncologist Dr. Kevin Murphy more than $39 million in his whistleblower claim against the University of San Diego.

According to the report by the San Diego Union-Tribune, the dispute between Murphy and UCSD began in the fall of 2015, when philanthropist Charles Kreutzkamp died of cancer and left $10 million to the university “for cancer research.” The university planned to use it as a general gift for its Moores Cancer Center. Murphy said the donor had intended to fund Murphy’s experimental brain stimulation treatment, known as PrTMS. He complained the school was attempting to divert the funds.

Eventually, the school steered the money to Murphy’s research. But he said school officials thwarted his attempts to set up clinical trials and ignored his official complaints about it. The school said Murphy violated policies, wrongly used donated funds to set up a research clinic off campus and enriched himself and his companies.

According to investigative reporting by non-profit Inewsource.com, the UC system launched the litigation battle in 2020 when it sued Murphy, alleging he committed fraud and enriched himself using the $10 million donation to the university meant for research. It claimed at least $6.9 million of that donation was gone but no research was ever performed.

Murphy countersued, claiming UCSD led a campaign against him when he spoke up about the university funds being directed away from their intended purpose.

Those two lawsuits were combined into a massive trial that ended this week with a $39 million verdict in favor of Dr. Murphy. The jury deliberated for fewer than eight hours before returning a verdict Wednesday afternoon.

In addition to ruling in favor of Murphy, the jury also found that the doctor had breached his duty of loyalty to UCSD and acted against its interests. The jury awarded about $67,000 in favor of the UC system, which covered money Murphy had earned outside the university that he had failed to turn over as required.

The UC system asked for more than $8 million in damages, including civil penalties for violations of the False Claims Act and years of Murphy’s salary paid to him while he was disloyal to the public institution. UCSD had also sued for damages against Murphy’s private medical clinic and medical software company, but the jury found that the companies did not owe any damages.

Murphy said he would use the funds to run the trials he had always intended to conduct using the $10 million donation to UCSD.

The ruling is the latest of several whistleblower cases his laywer, Mark T. Quigley at Greene Broillet & Wheeler, has won against the University of California. According to the firms website, .

In another high-profile whistleblower retaliation trial, Mr. Quigley says that he attained a $2 million verdict against the UC Regents and the former Dean of the UC Irvine School of Medicine. The plaintiff in that case, Mark Linskey, M.D., is a tenured full professor at the UC Irvine School of Medicine and the former Chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery. Mr. Quigley said he resolved the case for a total of $3 million in damages and also obtained a Court Order reinstating Dr. Linskey to the Department of Neurological Surgery and residency program.

In another case, Scheer vs UC Regents, (2022) 76 Cal App. 5th 904, a California State Appeals Court recently reinstated one of Mr. Quigley’s whistleblower retaliation cases which involves a top UCLA pathology doctor’s claims that he was fired in retaliation after raising concerns about workplace mismanagement. The plaintiff, Dr. Arnold Scheer, alleged in his 2017 lawsuit that the University of California Regents and two former supervisors fired him after he identified numerous issues and violations concerning patient safety, mismanagement, fraudulent conduct, sub-standard facility conditions, lost specimen samples, and more.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge dismissed all of Dr. Scheer’s claims at the summary judgment stage, but the three-judge panel unanimously revived the case that asserts three causes of action: violations of a state whistleblower protection law, Labor Code section 1102.5, a whistleblower law specifically protecting University of California employees, Government Code section 8547.10; and a health care worker whistleblower protection law, Health, and Safety Code section 1278.5.

An in another case, attorney Quigley achieved a $10 million settlement in Pedowitz v. UC Regents, a whistleblower-retaliation case. The Los Angeles Times reports that Robert Pedowitz, originally recruited to UCLA in 2009 to run the orthopedic surgery department, sued UCLA, the UC Regents, fellow surgeons, and senior university officials because they failed to act on his complaints about conflicts of interest. Pedowitz alleged that they later retaliated against him for speaking out.

According to the LA Times story, Pedowitz stated he became “concerned about colleagues who had financial ties to medical-device makers or other companies that could unduly influence their care of patients or taint important medical research.” Pedowitz raised concerns about the financial dealings of several doctors, including an orthopedic surgeon that testified at trial about receiving $250,000 in consulting fees in 2008 from device maker Medtronic. Pedowitz also took issue with physicians who included UCLA logos on personal websites without getting official permission.

After raising his concerns, however, Pedowitz said he was pressured to step down as department chairman in 2010. He accused the university of retaliation, stating he was denied patient referrals and prevented from participating in grants and other activities, LA Times reports

Michele Earley, Ashraf Gorgi, Hyun Sook Lee, Roman Hernandez Aguilar, and Jose Flores Campos were each applicants in a workers’ compensation proceeding. In each case one of the parties had filed a Petition for Reconsideration of a ruling issued in their case.

By statute, the WCAB must act upon such petitions within 60 days. To satisfy this requirement, the Board often grants petitions for purposes of further study without first deciding whether reconsideration is actually warranted. Later – sometimes many months after the petition for reconsideration was filed – the Board issues a decision on the merits affirming, reversing, or modifying the ruling at issue.

In each of these five cases, the Board issued a grant-for-study order. The Petitioners’ grant-for-study orders arose in different situations with different timelines. The cases are different but the Board’s orders were exactly the same. The uniform language of these orders reveals a standard form and not particularized analyses.

The Board explained its grant-for-study procedure. It generally tries to identify significant cases or those requiring en banc review, and cases involving complicated or novel issues. It was able to trace the history of this practice to the 1950’s; an earlier origin existed but is lost in time. The Board surmised the grant-for-study procedure “evolved naturally” from 1913 statutes that allowed the Industrial Accident Commission (a precursor to the Board) either to grant or to deny rehearing and thereafter to issue a decision after rehearing.

According to the results of a public records request that Petitioners served on the Board, as of November 2, 2021, there were 543 workers’ compensation cases awaiting a final decision in which the Board had issued a grant-for-study order between October 1, 2018 and October 1, 2021. The time between the filing of the grant-for-study orders and the Board’s final decisions ranged from five to 21 months.

The Court of Appeal issue a writ of mandate requiring the Board to cease its grant-for-study procedure and to comply with the statute when granting reconsideration in the published case of Earley v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. B318842 (August 2023).

Labor Code section 5908.5 requires the Board to explain its reasons for granting reconsideration and to identify the evidence supporting its decision. The Court simply said that the “statute is clear. The Board must obey it.”

At oral argument, the Board assured the Court of Appeal that it carefully reviews the cases in which it decides to issue a grant-for-study order. A careful review is not enough. Section 5908.5 requires the Board to go a step further and to explain in its order granting reconsideration why it made the decision to grant reconsideration based upon the evidence in the particular case.

However the Court of Appeal noted that “The Board’s grant-for-study orders in these cases fell short. These orders gave no reason for granting reconsideration other than a boilerplate statement that further study is necessary ‘based upon our initial review of the record.’ A rubber stamp could have authored these statements.“

“The Board does not claim that its standard grant-for-study order complies with section 5908.5. Rather, its defense of the grant-for-study procedure focuses on the long tenure of the procedure and the claimed impossibility of issuing a reasoned order in all cases. But a long-standing and incorrect procedure remains incorrect.”

“The Board must comply with section 5908.5 when it orders reconsideration. That is, the Board must state in detail the reasons for its decision and the evidence supporting it. Those reasons must be based on the grounds identified in section 5903. The Board need not, however, issue a final order within 60 days. The review necessary to support a decision to grant a petition for reconsideration within 60 days does not involve the same burden as the preparation of a final ruling. The Board must engage in the analysis necessary to permit a reasoned decision as to whether reconsideration is warranted based upon the factors identified in section 5903 and the evidence in the particular case. The Board then can decide whether to affirm, to modify, or to vacate the order at issue after further consideration and a more thorough review of the record.”

Petitioners met the statutory requirements for an award of attorney fees under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5. However the Court of Appeal reduced the requested $221,554.50 in fees by one half because Petitioners’ success was only partial.

“Petitioners successfully challenged the lawfulness of the Board’s current grant-for-study practice, resulting in an order that will require the Board to comply with section 5908.5 when it grants reconsideration. They did not achieve their aim of requiring the Board to issue final rulings on petitions for reconsideration within 60 days.” The Court of Appeal also awarded Petitioners their out-of-pocket appellate costs, which they identify as $7,891.63.