{"id":215456,"date":"2026-03-11T21:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T21:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/215456\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T21:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T21:35:07","slug":"orange-county-to-pay-925000-apiece-to-attorneys-in-harassment-claims-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/215456\/","title":{"rendered":"Orange County to pay $925,000 apiece to attorneys in harassment claims \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two attorneys who sued Orange County alleging sexual harassment involving a former high-ranking prosecutor,<\/a> have agreed to $925,000 settlements of their claims, County Counsel Leon Page announced Tuesday, March 10.<\/p>\n

Orange County supervisors voted 3-2 on Feb. 24 to approve $925,000 apiece for Deputy District Attorney Mallory Miller and former prosecutor Shabnum Azizi, who now works as an attorney for San Diego. Supervisors Don Wagner and Janet Nguyen voted against the settlement offers.<\/p>\n

That leaves three more plaintiffs awaiting trial for their harassment claims, including one attorney who alleged racial harassment. The settlement offers came soon after Deputy District Attorney Bethel Cope-Vega won a $3.5 million verdict against the county last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cope-Vega\u2019s victory followed a triumph for Tracy Miller<\/a> last year in her lawsuit against the county, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer and his former top assistant, Shawn Nelson \u2014 now an Orange County Superior Court judge.<\/p>\n

Miller, who won a $3 million verdict<\/a> and $1.5 million in attorneys fees, said she was forced to retire due to retaliation for moving to protect whistleblowers alleging harassment from former prosecutor Gary Logalbo, who retired during an investigation of the claims and has since died.<\/p>\n

Spitzer and Nelson both repeatedly denied during the trial for Miller\u2019s lawsuit they spoke out against or targeted the women who reported the sexual harassment by Logalbo.<\/p>\n

Still to be determined is how much money in attorneys fees Cope-Vega will receive. But with settlements for two other plaintiffs amounting to a total of $1.3 million, that brings the total losses for the county to $11.1 million, with five more lawsuits still awaiting trial.<\/p>\n

It is unknown how much the firm representing the county, Sheppard-Mullin, has billed the county.<\/p>\n

The county\u2019s risk-assessment attorneys had negotiated a settlement for about $6 million that would have resolved all of the cases, but the Board of Supervisors rejected it in August 2021 and hired Sheppard-Mullin to defend the county.<\/p>\n

The cases were all moved to San Diego because of Spitzer\u2019s status as Orange County\u2019s top prosecutor and Nelson\u2019s position on the Orange County bench.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two attorneys who sued Orange County alleging sexual harassment involving a former high-ranking prosecutor, have agreed to $925,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,7,1312,1071,100,611,4765],"class_list":{"0":"post-215456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-courts","13":"tag-local-government","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-orange-county","16":"tag-orange-county-board-of-supervisors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215456","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=215456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}