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Chen v. County of Orange2/15/2002
As modified March 14, 2002. There is no change in the judgment. Petition for rehearing denied.
VICTORIA CHEN, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLANT,
v.
COUNTY OF ORANGE ET AL., DEFENDANTS AND RESPONDENTS.
Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of Orange County, Derek W. Hunt, Judge. Affirmed. (Super. Ct. No. 791711)
Oswald & Yap, Law Offices of Robert B. Reeves and Niall Sweetnam for Plaintiff and Appellant. Lewis, D'Amato, Brisbois & Bisgaard, Nancy E. Zeltzer and Gary M. Lape for Defendants and Respondents.
The opinion of the court was delivered by: Sills, P. J.
CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION
OPINION
I. INTRODUCTION
Victoria Chen was hired by the Orange County District Attorney's office as a Level I deputy district attorney in 1990, and by 1993 had been promoted to Level III. In July 1995 she went on leave because of complications with a pregnancy, but did not return to work until April 1997.
During her time on leave she earned, as she would later admit in court, in the "neighborhood" of $100,000 a year as a bond trader. She also tried a career in acting. She appeared "in an unpaid infomercial" and two commercials.
Then, after a short, and by all accounts unhappy, stint working in Orange County's North Court, she went on medical leave for stress in July 1997, and never came back to work. In the fall of that year, while still on stress leave, she decided to apply, along with about 40 or so other deputy district attorneys in the office, for some 10 openings for Level IV.
She contacted Vickie Hix, who was a management level deputy district attorney (Level V rank) and asked Hix if she would nominate her for promotion to Level IV at the up coming promotional meeting. Hix was rather reluctant to take up the task, since Chen had never worked for Hix and Hix had no personal knowledge of her background. Hix then mentioned that there was one question all of the people at the meeting would be interested in having answered: When would Chen come back to work, because "people we promote we need to have on the job."
Chen said that if she got the promotion, she'd be back. But "if not," she would "probably be stressed out for a while longer."
Chen did not get the promotion, and continued to be ostensibly "stressed out" for a great deal longer. Actually, indefinitely. She never returned to work. She filed this suit in March 1998, alleging marital status, race, and gender discrimination against her by the Orange County District Attorney's Office. She also asserted a cause of action for retaliation. (She had filed a complaint with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing in October 1997 -- before her 1997 promotion request was turned down).
In November 1998, still not having returned back to work, she applied again for promotion to Level IV. Again, she did not receive a promotion, and her lawsuit was subsequently amended to allege that the promotion denial was also taken in retaliation for her complaints.
Her marital status claim was based on allegations that she had received unfavorable assignments during her career because, beginning in late 1990, she began dating, and in May 1993 married, Devallis Rutledge, a high level management attorney in the office. Rutledge was supposedly not in the good graces of then-Orange County District Attorney Michael Cappizzi, and Chen's unfavorable assignments were allegedly a manifestation of the Capizzi faction's lack of approval of her relationship with, and marriage to,
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