Ex-Planning Chief Files Suit Against City

Accusing San Diego City Atty. John Witt’s office of malpractice in its handling of the City Hall sex-and-hush-money case, former city Planning Director Robert Spaulding filed a lawsuit Thursday against the city and Witt.

In a move prompted by the city’s rejection of a $2.75-million administrative claim filed by Spaulding last spring, his attorney, Michael Aguirre, filed a lawsuit in Superior Court asking for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Thursday’s 16-page suit, which largely repeats points made in Spaulding’s earlier filing, claims that Witt’s handling of the case has left Spaulding unable to find work in San Diego since he resigned his $108,000-a-year job in May. He left amid controversy over an affair with former City Planner Susan M. Bray that cost the city $98,531 in a secret settlement arranged by former City Manager John Lockwood.

Facing the prospect of having to make “a complete career change,” probably outside California, Spaulding has been sick, depressed and, along with his family, “publicly subjected to harsh humiliation, intense embarrassment and relentless ridicule,” Aguirre contended.

Witt, who has consistently denied any impropriety in the case, was out of town on vacation Thursday and unavailable for comment. However, Michael Weaver, a private attorney who represents the city both in Spaulding’s lawsuit and a similar one filed by Bray, called the suit “an act of desperation . . . with absolutely no chance of success.”

Although Spaulding contends that the affair with Bray was consensual, Bray contends that it was forced upon her and that she feared losing her job if she resisted her boss’s advances.

Early this year, shortly after Bray filed a sexual-harassment complaint against the city, Spaulding met with Witt and was assured that the city attorney would represent him, Aguirre said in the suit.

In doing so, Aguirre said, Witt violated the attorney-client relationship by not informing Spaulding that the city attorney’s office was “saturated with conflicts of interest” in the case because it also represented the city itself.