UCI Battles Show Perils of Bucking UC System : Employment: Fertility clinic case proves the rule that it takes lots of time, money and lawyers to fight university.

Talk to veterans of employment battles with UC Irvine and many say the same thing: It’s hardball, University of California style.

If you’re going to take on the university, critics say, you’d better have stamina, a good lawyer and financial reserves. And if you want to know how much public money the university is spending to fight off or settle up with its opponents be prepared to be told--None of your business.

Take what has happened recently at UCI:

* A UCI attorney ordered armed police to escort a popular assistant vice chancellor off campus last year after she was abruptly fired. Ten deans later protested.

* The university system spent more than $750,000 to settle a wrongful termination suit filed by a UCI physician--more than half of that amount paid to its own attorneys. As part of the deal, the doctor agreed never to discuss the matter, disparage UC or work there again.

* A former UCI French professor fought UCI for 11 years--taking a job at the Pennysaver shopper in the interim--before winning in 1987 and settling for an undisclosed sum.

* And more recently, in the UCI fertility scandal, personnel administrators handed whistle-blower Marilyn Killane packets of horror stories detailing the ruined lives of other whistle-blowers.

In fact, the treatment of Killane and two other whistle-blowers who complained about misconduct at UCI’s fertility clinic has some legislators, UC regents and taxpayers alarmed that the UC campuses lack accountability and might be hiding other problems from public view.

University officials acknowledged they will “play hardball” when needed but do not attempt to keep settlements cloaked in secrecy or deny the public how much it spends fighting lawsuits.

But legislators who have tried to find out that very information say they’ve been stonewalled.

“They don’t want you to know for fear the Legislature and the public will say, ‘Hey, wait, what’s going on with the public money?’ ” said former state Sen. Art Torres, who battled UC officials last year over their delay in releasing statistics on settlements of sex discrimination and tenure disputes.

“It’s a consistent pattern. And when you try to find out about it, they tighten their ties and say, ‘We’re the University of California,’ ” he said.

Last year, Torres threatened to withhold funding from the UC general counsel’s office to get it to provide the statistics he was looking for on sex discrimination and tenure cases.

When he finally got the numbers, Torres said, they were “less than accurate.” Cases were missing and a UC official, on Office of the President letterhead, refused to release “settlements for which the terms must remain confidential by agreement of the parties.”

According to statistics provided to the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, the University of California spent $2.4 million on outside attorneys to fight 43 sex-discrimination cases and $448,000 on five tenure appeals cases from January, 1988, to April, 1994.

To settle 31 sex-discrimination cases, the university spent $1.2 million, not including cases with confidentiality clauses. In a tenure-dispute case, it also paid a UCI ophthalmologist $235,000, funded a six-month sabbatical and agreed to let her reapply for tenure.

Gary Morrison, deputy general counsel for the University of California, on Friday denied that the university has tried to hide anything, saying the amounts the university spends on attorneys and settlements are a matter of public record. “I’m unaware of any attempt to withhold those at any time.”

On Friday, however, UCI officials refused to disclose how much it has paid the private law firm of McDermott, Will and Emory so far to represent them in the unfolding scandal at their fertility clinic, saying the amount would reveal their litigation strategy. Doctors at the clinic are accused of misappropriating human eggs and other medical and financial wrongdoing.

“It has not been my experience that [UC] is arrogant and high-handed and is attempting to cover things up,” said Morrison, adding that secret settlements are being used less frequently these days because they cast a perception that something is being hidden from the public.

“I think everyone has to recognize that plaintiffs do feel victimized and they believe that anything other than an abject apology from the institution is somehow offensive,” he said. “Very infrequently, they make complaints . . . about their treatment.”

But employees say complaining can ruin their personal and professional lives. Some say wryly that the name of one of UC’s favored outside law firms aptly describes the process: Payne & Fears.

“What the university does is they call them liars,” said Donald K. Hufstader, a Santa Ana attorney who represents six former UCI employees who are suing the University of California. “They try to constructively discharge them. Eventually, when [the employees] either get fired or leave . . . [the employees] sue them and then they settle . . . to send a message to everybody else.”

Most discouraging to some who have settled their complaints with the university is learning later that nothing ever was done to rectify the original problem.

“The employees get paid and they’re out on the street,” Hufstader said. “After that they have no effective way to redress a problem other than their own.”

French professor Therese Lynn, 62, who fought the university for 11 years, knows all about that.

She has outlived her attorney and the UCI chancellor who declined to reverse her tenure rejection, but, she said, she has not outlived the troubling legal tactics employed by UCI.

“I see in the newspaper that it’s not old, it’s the same. It is the same after 20 years,” said Lynn, now an associate professor at Chapman University in Orange.

Lynn lost her case in federal court, then won it on appeal, but had to wait for the UC Board of Regents’ lawyers to appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. The university settled with her in 1987 for a small sum, which barely covered attorney fees.

In the most recent case, whistle-blower Killane, the first to report misconduct at UCI’s fertility clinic, brought her complaints to virtually every department she could think of, but no one would listen, she said. Instead, Killane, 56, the clinic’s former manager, was viewed as a troublemaker and relegated to a series of “paper clip” jobs.

“Human Resources gave me these articles to read how [whistle-blowers] lost their jobs, ruined their lives, what happened to their lives,” Killane recalled. “They said whistle-blowers are very recognizable because they always carry around stacks of documents. It’s true. That was me. It was very intimidating.”

Now, to Killane’s distress, the articles have proven all too true. In spite of a $325,000 settlement, intended by the chancellor to “make her whole,” she said her life is in pieces.

Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame) said the university’s typical response when faced with an embarrassing problem is to throw money “around like there’s no tomorrow.”

“For damage control, the sky’s the limit,” said Speier, who has fought to ban state agencies from using taxpayer money for confidential settlements.

Speier estimates that just in one case--the UCI fertility scandal--UC already has spent at least $3 million to investigate wrongdoing and retaliation, pay outside attorney fees and ante up more than $900,000 in settlements to three whistle-blowers.

“If you look at that $3 million, you could reduce the student fees at the University of California by $30 just on this one case,” Speier said.

UC Regent William T. Bagley said the university does not handle legal problems in a “cavalier” manner. The regents should have been told of the UCI whistle-blower settlements , he said, because the underlying claims were so egregious.

But Bagley said he’s not troubled by the dollar amounted paid to the whistle-blowers.

“That’s not a inordinate amount of money from a $7-billon budget,” he said. “We can’t look at every $300,000 settlement. . . . We approve settlements of lawsuits at every meeting in executive sessions, sometimes 10 or 20 of them. I can’t recall the board trying to second-guess any of them.”

Critics say the UC system for handling legal matters needs checks and balances, particularly in the areas of confidentiality clauses and treatment of whistle-blowers.

Former state Sen. Torres and current legislators say the university tends to forget its mission as a public institution, stashing its troubles behind the wall of “academic freedom” guaranteed in the state Constitution.

“There’s a clubby atmosphere in that general counsel’s office that doesn’t permit the kind of sunshine there that ought to occur in a public institution,” Torres said.

Even UC’s harshest critics acknowledge that every public institution is vulnerable to lawsuits and not all of them are righteous. People trip over their own shoelaces or find their dreams of a tenured position dashed, and seek the help of the court. Then there are less clear-cut cases involving subjective opinions of an employee’s skill or value or credibility.

One of those cases involves Dr. Marjorie Mosier.

Mosier, an ophthalmologist, spent her entire adult life at the University of California, attending UCLA Medical School and getting specialized training there. She joined the UCI faculty in 1976.

When she was denied tenure in the late 1980s, she sued, claiming it was sex discrimination. The University of California settled with her for $235,000 in 1989 and allowed her reapply for tenure. But when Mosier applied again in 1993, although her peers approved her, she was again rejected by UCI officials and told the quality of her research was inadequate, said Hufstader, her attorney. Mosier sued a second time.

“We claim in our present lawsuit that it was sex discrimination,” Hufstader said. “They claim her scholarship publication isn’t up to snuff . . . but they made it impossible for her to [pursue that goal].”

In a case involving Dr. Carol Jackson, the surgeon whose legal battle cost UC more than $750,000, the dispute began over $5,000 in patient fees and escalated into a fight over alleged wrongful termination and breach of contract. Jackson claimed the UCI lured her away from a secure position in Seattle only to renege on promises of tenure.

Once the case was settled, she faced a $50,000 penalty if she talked about the terms. The university paid $440,000 to the firm of Payne & Fears in legal fees before agreeing to settle the sex-discrimination case. Jackson received $262,000 plus $52,000 in legal fees.

“About $750,000-plus in state funds was paid out in lawyers fees and compensation. Who signed off on this and who is responsible?” asked Larry Agran, former mayor of Irvine and a member of a group fighting for equality for women on campus. His wife, Phyllis, is a professor at UCI’s College of Medicine.

Mary Carol Perrot, the assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs who was escorted off campus, learned firsthand how tough the university can play.

In her lawsuit, Perrot said she was highly regarded by UCI--enough to earn a merit raise in 1992--until she opposed a new UCI hiring plan contending it was illegal and violated policy.

Days after she made her opinions known about the plan, Perrot alleges, she was suddenly fired by supervisors retaliating against her.

Perrot declined to be interviewed for this story.

Her pending lawsuit claims that armed guards arrived at her office along with a letter of dismissal. According to the suit, Perrot later learned that UCI thought police necessary because “Perrot barricaded herself in her office and it was feared that she was going to destroy confidential information.”

Deputy General Counsel Morrison said he was especially troubled that people would view this incident as a pattern of unfairness.

“I know that this did, in fact, happen. I know it was controversial and I know [a UCI attorney] spent a great deal of time explaining why she thought this was necessary and regrettable. . . . That a [single] situation might be warranted does not mean that there is a pattern of treating plaintiffs unfairly.”