By Michael Grabell
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2007 The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — An assistant Dallas fire chief who was fired after the city concluded that he sexually harassed employees will receive $1.55 million in one of the largest lawsuit settlements for a fired city employee in years.
After meeting in closed session Wednesday, the City Council unanimously approved the payout for Roland Gamez, who oversaw the city’s 911 call center until he was fired in March 2006.
Mr. Gamez was accused of inappropriate touching and of telling a male subordinate that he wanted to kiss him on the lips. But his lawyer said the former assistant chief simply had a warm leadership style and was a victim of politics for supporting a fire chief who was forced out.
Neither the mayor nor council members would directly address the city’s problems in the case.
But a federal judge appeared to be on the verge of writing a negative opinion about whether the city had hidden or destroyed records in the case.
“Certainly, it is a lot of money,” Mayor Tom Leppert said. “There were some issues that came up that weren’t related to the key elements of the case.”
Jack Ayres, an attorney for Mr. Gamez, disagreed with that assessment.
“I think the withholding of documents was from my standpoint icing on the cake,” he said. “They were going to lose the case on the merits [of the wrongful termination claim] and they knew it, and that’s why they settled.”
As part of the settlement, Mr. Gamez, 48, will have the option of having some of the money considered salary so he can take advantage of a better retirement plan.
Although Mr. Gamez would be on the books as a city employee under this option, he would not be allowed to perform any functions of an employee - such as setting foot on fire department property or contacting any employees during their work hours, Mr. Ayres said.
The case took a turn for the worse for the city at an April 30 hearing before U.S. District Judge T. John Ward of Marshall.
The judge sharply rebuked the city for what he said was “reckless conduct” in turning over records to Mr. Gamez’s lawyer as required by law. And he accused an assistant city attorney of submitting a false affidavit and obstructing a court order.
Judge Ward ruled that the city had engaged in “sanctionable conduct.” But he delayed any penalties until he could find out more about what the city had done.
After the hearing, the city hired an outside law firm, which ended up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. The city also hired a separate lawyer - an expert in attorney grievance cases - to represent the accused assistant city attorney individually.
Attorneys for the city argued that the problems in turning over records were mistakes caused by a complex e-mail archiving process that was laborious to search.
“We have to improve all the technology so we have a centralized way of keeping records,” Mayor Pro Tem Elba Garcia said.
Council members said the city was meeting with its technology department to figure out a way to fix the problem.
“We made an error in our procedures and we’re correcting our procedures, and we hope it doesn’t happen again,” said council member Mitchell Rasansky.