PARLIER – With a confidential settlement agreement, the city of Parlier has put to rest one of many open lawsuits leveled against it.
The Parlier City Council voted 4-1 in closed session on Aug. 21 to settle a wrongful termination lawsuit brought against the city by former employee Juan Torres. The council then adopted a resolution, again by a vote of 4-1, at its meeting on Sept. 4 to execute the settlement agreement of $150,000. Mayor Alma Beltran voted against both actions.
In explaining her opposition to the settlement, Beltran brought up the $24 million civil case that was brought against Cardi B, for which the famous rapper was recently cleared of liability.
“You think she’s gonna settle? It’s the principle of it,” Beltran said. “If it’s your money, are you gonna say, ‘Oh well, I’m just gonna give in’ when you know that they’re not saying the truth and they’re not being transparent and they’re making things up? Are you going to go ahead and give them your money, or are you going to fight to make sure that they don’t get a dime because they don’t deserve that?”
The settlement was made in the case Torres filed against the city, the Parlier Police Department and city employee Rosalia Solis in January 2022. In his claim, Torres accused the city of medical and sex/gender discrimination, retaliation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, creating a hostile work environment and wrongful termination.
Beltran criticizes settlement
Beltran first brought up her issues with a possible settlement at the council’s Aug. 7 meeting. During council member reports, she asked if a check was ever paid out for a psychological evaluation requested as part of the Torres case. She then said she had a “very serious concern” about that because she saw on the Fresno County Superior Case website that the case had been settled.
Disclosing what happened during a closed session on July 23, Beltran said that the council had a quorum of three members — herself, Councilmember Janie Molina and Mayor pro tem Sabrina Rodriguez — and voted 2-1 to settle the case. Beltran said she then asked for the item to be put on the agenda again to discuss it further.
According to state law, major decisions like resolutions, monetary payments and ordinances must be made by a majority of the total membership of the city council — in Parlier’s case, that means three out of five. No action was reported after the July 23 closed session because of this.
“So my thing is, we paid for a psychologist for this case, but … it’s already been settled,” Beltran said. “I don’t even see why we should even have a discussion of that case when it’s been settled with two to one vote. So I am very disappointed. I feel that we were not represented to the extent of protecting the city at all.”
Beltran accused Interim City Attorney Meggin Boranian of moving to settle the case when Beltran had first asked to discuss it with the entire council. She said Boranian’s job is to protect the city, “not to make decisions for the city.”
Boranian said she did not take any action on the case — in fact, she has no authority over the case as she is not the attorney assigned to it. Parlier retained the law firm Chapman Zaragoza LLP and attorney Zena Sin-Zaragoza in June, replacing former City Attorney Neal Costanzo as the legal representation on the case.
According to documents available on the Fresno County Court’s website, there was a notice of settlement filed on Aug. 6; however, the notice was filed by Torres’ attorney.
The council did not end up holding another closed session on Aug. 7 to discuss the case because Beltran said it was pointless. The council did, however, discuss the case again on Aug. 21 in both closed and open sessions.
During open session on Aug. 21, Beltran again brought up the accusation and continued to discuss what both the city attorney who was filling in for Boranian and the attorneys on the case said should have been reserved for closed session. Speaking from the audience, one of the attorneys on the case pointed out that the notice of settlement filed on Aug. 6 that Beltran kept referencing did not state the settlement agreement amount.
“The problem is that this is taxpayers’ money, and the taxpayers do deserve this; this is something that they need to know what happened with their tax dollars,” Beltran said.
Beltran also criticised the legal counsel on the case for being too inexperienced, as one of the attorneys was admitted to the State Bar of California in 2019 and the other in 2021. She said the only reason they settled is because they didn’t want to go to court.
“The problem is, again, that you guys just got paid to do nothing but settle,” Beltran said. “That’s what you did, because you didn’t turn anything in. You made us pay for a psychologist that didn’t even go to trial, because you wanted to avoid the trial itself.”
Juan Torres v. City of Parlier
How the city has handled and settled the Torres case has been a point of contention between individual council members, between the mayor and city staff and between council members and the public. Part of this is because the background of the case relates to the mess of a situation with former Police Chief Jose Garza, who won a $1 million wrongful termination suit against the city last September.
Torres was the initial suspect in the embezzlement investigation that Garza claimed was what lost him his job. In his own claim, Torres alleged that he was retaliated against for reporting the suspected embezzlement of public funds by Solis at the police department’s records division. Each time the Torres case is brought up, other disagreements about how the Garza case played out crop up as well.
Speaking during public comment on the matter on Sept. 4, Trinidad Pimentel, a Parlier resident and former council member, questioned who decided to reach a settlement with Torres and what the reason was for the settlement. Pimentel said Torres’ release had nothing to do with the embezzlement investigation but instead had to do with other accusations of illegal conduct that were never investigated.
“I want to know who determined and who made that final decision that this be settled, because I think that the community is getting the short end of the string by having to pay a person that was nine months at home getting paid plus now he’s getting $150,000 of our hard working tax dollars,” Pimentel said.
Alternatively, another resident who did not state his name during public comment said he would rather see the city part with $150,000 through a settlement than however much it would cost to go through a trial. Had the city gone to trial with the case and lost, it could have cost even more money if the city was required to pay damages.
