The former district attorney of Shasta County and three members of his staff have been found by a Sacramento jury to have deliberately spread false and scurrilous stories about a former employee of the office.
But this one is on the taxpayers – $855,600 worth.
The four were facing the possibility of punitive damages on top of that, but the county, with the help of U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr., came to the rescue.
For all practical purposes, the jury's verdicts no longer exist.
It started after Joyce Gardner left the District Attorney's Office after a disagreement over how the victim/witness assistance branch should be run. She set about to establish herself as a private counselor. But problems arose in 2005 when, according to the jury, three former colleagues and her successor as victim/witness director began to tell people she was guilty of unlawful and unethical conduct, including theft of funds, and was under investigation.
The county was deemed blameless but, on May 31, the jury found that Gardner was owed $775,000 for all the misery, expense and damage to her reputation caused by former District Attorney Gerald Benito; Elizabeth Leslie, the office's chief fiscal manager and Gardner's immediate supervisor; Angela Fitzgerald (now Angela McClure), Gardner's successor; and Carol Gall, a Gardner subordinate in the victim/witness branch.
The jury was to reconvene June 18 for a second phase of the trial at which the panel was to decide whether punitive damages should be assessed against the four individuals.
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But the punitive phase never came to pass. Instead, on June 15 the county and Gardner requested that the trial be shut down, that "all verdicts against (the) individual defendants be nullified," and that all claims against them be dismissed.
The stipulation and request asked England to enter the $775,000 judgment against the county, plus $30,600 to cover costs incurred by Gardner's attorney, Anthony Poidmore. Further, it said, the county will pay an additional $50,000 to Gardner within 60 days of the execution of a settlement agreement between her and the county. But the agreement was conditioned on England's approval of the requests.
England issued an order the same day wiping out the verdicts, entering judgment against the county and vacating the punitive damages phase of the trial. The jurors were told not to come back.
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So, according to the source, nullification of the verdicts was meant to avoid a possible legal confrontation between the individuals and the county, and to assure them that they will never have to acknowledge – on an employment application or at any other time – that a jury found they falsely trashed Gardner's reputation.
Sacramento Bee, 6/24/12