The Long Beach City College agreed Wednesday to pay $2.7 million to its former superintendent-president who claims she was wrongfully fired after filing a whistleblower complaint against members of the LBCC Board of Trustees.<\/p>\n
The board voted 4-0 to approve the settlement, with board president Uduak-Joe Ntuk recused and absent due to being named as a defendant.<\/p>\n
The long-running, fiercely litigated case cost the college more than $1 million in legal fees, pitted trustees against each other and garnered significant public attention that made it difficult for LBCC\u2019s former leader, Reagan Romali, to find employment, according to her lawyer, Louis Cohen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe settlement means vindication,\u201d he said, adding that Romali hopes to return to the presidency of another college.<\/p>\n
Cohen said that to his knowledge, it is the largest single-plaintiff settlement LBCC has ever paid in an employment case.<\/p>\n
The protracted dispute began years ago when Romali was publicly named as a whistleblower<\/a> on March 2, 2020 and fired two days later<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2021, she filed a claim against the college seeking $10 million in damages. She alleged that after reporting two trustees \u2014 Uduak-Joe Ntuk and Vivian Malauulu \u2014 to the Long Beach Police Department for alleged public corruption, the two trustees convinced the board to \u201claunch a retaliatory investigation against Dr. Romali, which culminated in the termination of her employment,\u201d according to the complaint.<\/p>\n Romali further alleged the college and trustees had defamed and blackballed her, harming her ability to secure future employment.<\/p>\n Malauulu was dismissed from the lawsuit, according to court documents, and both Ntuk and Malauulu have previously denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n Lawyers for the college, however, wrote in a court document that concerns about Romali\u2019s employment had arisen well before it learned of her whistleblower complaint. The board initiated an evaluation of her performance, which \u201cconfirmed concerns regarding Plaintiff\u2019s performance, ethics, and ability to work collaboratively,\u201d according to a motion filed by the college\u2019s lawyers.<\/p>\n The motion, dated Sept. 11, emphasized the resources the college had already expended: extensive discovery and motion practice, 12 depositions and more than $1 million in legal fees. Continuing litigation could result in another $1 million in legal fees, the lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n The settlement requires Romali to dismiss the case and remaining defendants with prejudice, closing the case permanently and preventing Romali from refiling. The settlement also releases the claims against Ntuk. He declined to comment on the settlement.<\/p>\n Stacey Toda, a spokesperson for LBCC, acknowledged the settlement resolution and declined to comment further.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Long Beach City College agreed Wednesday to pay $2.7 million to its former superintendent-president who claims she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-521692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521692","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=521692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}