A lawsuit filed by a former aide to a Carson city councilwoman who says he was fired for complaining about having to run personal errands for the politician should be dismissed for a lack of triable issues, the city\u2019s attorneys contend in new court papers.<\/p>\n
Justin Battle\u2019s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges a violation of the state Labor Code. Although the suit is targeted at District 4 Councilwoman Arleen Bocatija Rojas\u2019 alleged actions, she is not a defendant.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis case is not about whistleblowing,\u201d the city\u2019s attorneys state in court papers filed Thursday with Judge Stephen Pfahler in advance of an Aug. 27 hearing.<\/p>\n
Instead, they say the city terminated Battle for legitimate, performance-based reasons due to his limited work availability and that the law does not insulate employees from termination based on routine workplace complaints.<\/p>\n
Battle had a second job as a student supervision aide in which he worked 30 hours weekly at Stephen M. White Middle School in the Los Angeles Unified School District and his hours there overlapped with those he had with the city, according to the city\u2019s attorneys\u2019 court papers.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Bocatija Rojas\u2019 full-time job required that a council aide be available to help her after 3 p.m., the city\u2019s lawyers further explain.<\/p>\n
Battle\u2019s six-month probationary period concluded in November 2023, when the city evaluated him and determined that he had not met the required standards and said his inflexible scheduling demands did not allow him to sufficiently meet the needs of the councilwoman, so he was terminated that month, the city\u2019s attorneys state in their court papers.<\/p>\n
Bocatija Rojas is a longtime Carson resident and Los Angeles Police Department member and was its first female Filipino-American officer, as well as the city\u2019s second Filipina councilwoman since 1993, according to the city\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
According to Battle\u2019s suit, he was hired in 2019 as a recreation assistant, was promoted in June 2022 to administrative intern and elevated once more in March 2023 to be Bocatija Rojas\u2019 council aide. She required him to be available at all times to run personal errands for her, including picking up her daughter from school and keeping a watch on her whereabouts, using an LAPD tool to track the girl\u2019s email and to monitor her phone calls, the suit states.<\/p>\n
Battle also was tasked with picking up the councilwoman\u2019s dry cleaning, driving her to events, getting her car serviced, working on her vacation plans, mowing her lawn, getting her food and transporting her sister, according to the suit, which also says Bocatija Rojas told him not to use the office so that other people would not notice that he was doing her personal errands.<\/p>\n
Battle also alleges that Bocatija Rojas asked him to spy on District 2 Councilman Jim Dear\u2019s \u201ccomings and goings\u201d and \u201cwatch Jim Dear\u2019s girlfriend or wife and inform Bocatija Rojas when she left.\u201d<\/p>\n
Battle refused the order regarding Dear and reported the councilwoman\u2019s demand regarding the councilman multiple times to Assistant City Manager Robert Lennox, but \u201cthe conduct never stopped,\u201d according to the suit.<\/p>\n
Battle believes his termination was related to his complaints about alleged illegal conduct and his refusal to engage in it, the suit filed in July 2024 states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lawsuit filed by a former aide to a Carson city councilwoman who says he was fired for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":632582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[120786,1582,276,46018,273010,120445,2961,273011,224,5337,29283,8719],"class_list":["post-641509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-aide","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-carson","tag-councilwomans","tag-dismissed","tag-la","tag-legitimate","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-reasons","tag-says"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116195005970548808","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}