County Laid Him Off for Whistle-Blowing, Scientist Tells Court

A former Los Angeles County health department scientist testified Wednesday that he was sure “the ax was about to fall on my neck” after his whistle-blowing efforts to report alleged safety hazards were followed by notification that his job description was being changed.

Three months later, Reuven Zach said, he received a letter informing him that he was being laid off from his position as a medical radiation physicist at the Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar.

“The county’s contention is that he was laid off because of budget cuts,” Zach’s attorney, Laurence Labovitz, said outside the courtroom where Zach was testifying in his $1-million wrongful-discharge suit against the county.

“But he was the only full-time employee laid off at the Olive View Medical Center,” Labovitz said. “That’s an amazing coincidence. . . . What he was really terminated for was reporting those safety violations for 3 1/2 years.”

The county denies that Zach was singled out for retribution. Irving Cohen, county Department of Health Services finance director, said at the time that Zach was one of 17 employees designated for release because of budget cutbacks. Cohen said the layoff list was compiled strictly on the basis of seniority and saved the county about $650,000 a year.

Zach’s testimony on the second day of the jury trial before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz focused on a flurry of memos between Zach and his superiors. Most of the memos concerned Zach’s allegations that technicians at Olive View and its satellite clinics in the San Fernando Valley were failing to follow safe procedures in their use of X-ray equipment.

The physicist told the jury that in a 1988 memo--to Dr. Issa Yaghmai, then chairman of the Olive View radiology department--he complained about the use of “outdated film” and about the “unprofessional conduct and attitude” of some of the technicians at the satellite clinics.

“In my opinion,” he said he wrote, “this intolerable situation is a direct result of inadequate and unprofessional supervision.”

Zach said he complained in another memo a few weeks later that the “medical staff was being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation” because of the supervisors’ failure to make sure that available radiation shields were properly installed.

A few weeks after that, he said, he submitted a quarterly report on the radiology department that “highlighted the deficiencies in quality control.” He said that his report was followed by a memo from him complaining that women were being subjected to unnecessarily high levels of radiation during mammograms.

Then, on July 25, 1988, he received a notice that his job description was being updated.

“I was shocked,” he said. “I felt the ax was about to fall on my neck.”

Nonetheless, Zach said, he sent a letter to county Supervisor Mike Antonovich on Sept 23, 1988, “to bring his attention to deeds and misdeeds that I thought he should know about.”

Antonovich never answered, he said, but nine days later Zach received a letter from Douglas Bagley, administrator of Olive View, expressing appreciation for his “dedicated service to the county” and informing him that “because of the department’s required budget curtailments,” he was being laid off.

“I believed then, as I believe now, that my layoff was a sham,” Zach said.

Zach’s suit names the county; the Department of Health Services and its director, Robert Gates; Olive View; Yaghmai; Bagley and Charles J. Canales, a county personnel officer. In addition to $1 million in damages, the suit seeks Zach’s reinstatement.

Kevin Brazile, the attorney from the county counselor’s office who is representing the county, is expected to begin cross-examination of Zach sometime today. The county probably will call most of its witnesses next week.