The San Francisco Standard<\/a> showed that the skull belonged to a man found dead in an embankment beside a homeless encampment near Lake Merced in October 2014. <\/p>\nSonia Kominek-Adachi filed a wrongful termination lawsuit last week. Linkedin\/Sonia Kominek<\/p>\n
When the skull was discarded, it was encased in a clay cast as the staff attempted to reconstruct the appearance of the man\u2019s face. <\/p>\n
In the case that a body cannot be identified, or there are no next of kin left to claim it, the remains are cremated and scattered at the Golden Gate Bridge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe skull was a critical element in the [office\u2019s] ability to identify [the remains]. Without the skull, further identification procedures could not be completed,\u201d the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n
After Kominek-Adachi flagged the disappearance, the head honcho allegedly \u201cmade no effort to initiate an investigation into the whereabouts of the skull and gave her the cold shoulder when she pressed further. <\/p>\n
The missing skull was recovered more than a year later. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Serrano Sewell allegedly continued to dodge her inquiries and, when she was up for a promotion, he \u201cillegally\u201d directed her to take a polygraph test and subjected her to an extensive background check, the lawsuit alleged.<\/p>\n
In that, the lawsuit purported Serrano Sewell was trying to retaliate against Kominek-Adachi by \u201cuncover[ing] all aspects of her personal and private life.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Kominek-Adachi\u2019s promotion was finally confirmed, the office pivoted and placed her in a temporary position, the lawsuit claimed.<\/p>\n
Months later, and after Serrano Sewell insisted he\u2019d recovered the long-lost skull, Kominek-Adachi fell out of her boss\u2019 favor over a consumer affairs complaint she filed against a funeral home in Placer County, alleging that it failed to cremate her grandmother\u2019s remains on a timely basis. <\/p>\n
Kominek-Adachi alleged that Serrano Sewell went out of his way to try and have her fired. Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The complaint was made separately from her role at the medical examiner\u2019s office, but the funeral home reached out to her workplace and asserted the filing was improper because of her role as a death investigator. <\/p>\n
From there, Serrano Sewell allegedly used the debacle \u201cto concoct a reason to terminate\u201d Kominek-Adachi, the lawsuit claimed.<\/p>\n
Serrano Sewell fired her while she was still being investigated by the office\u2019s human resources department, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
She was first told her termination was due to budget cuts, but the city later linked it to her having \u201cexerted undue influence\u201d in her disagreement with the funeral home, the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe saw a career in the medical examiner\u2019s office, and that career is over. Her termination is a terrible black mark on her ability to continue to work in her field,\u201d her attorney, James Urbanic, told The Standard.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors moved to settle Kominek-Adachi\u2019s $750,000 wrongful termination lawsuit on Tuesday, KQED<\/a> reported.<\/p>\nJen Kwart, the communications director for the San Francisco Attorney\u2019s Office, said in a statement to The Post that they \u201cbelieve the proposed settlement is an appropriate resolution given the inherent costs of continued litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A high-ranking official with the San Francisco medical examiner\u2019s office allegedly chucked a human skull needed to identify…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7,82667,1846,27836,4182,101,103,102,104,106,105,3586],"class_list":{"0":"post-172758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-hirings-and-firings","10":"tag-lawsuit","11":"tag-medical-examiners-office","12":"tag-metro","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","15":"tag-san-francisco-news","16":"tag-sf","17":"tag-sf-headlines","18":"tag-sf-news","19":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}