County Settles Sex Harassment Suit with Will Rogers State Beach Lifeguard

A settlement was reached in a lawsuit filed by a former county lifeguard, who claimed she was sexually harassed and injured during what she was told was a training exercise and then retaliated against for reporting how male colleagues were treating her, her attorney said today.

Elizabeth Robbins maintained in her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that she was forced to work in a hostile work environment and stalked by other lifeguards as punishment for having come forward.

Judge Elizabeth Feffer earlier tossed Robbins’ allegations of battery and a second sexual harassment cause of action that alleged gender violence.

Robbins’ lawyer, Ann Hull, confirmed the case was resolved, but declined to divulge the terms, saying only, “I’m pleased that it settled.”

Robbins filed the lawsuit in February 2012 against the county and David Carr, who she identified as her supervisor.

Robbins says she began working in the lifeguard division of the county Fire Department in 2003, at age 19, and was assigned to Will Rogers State Beach, among others. She alleged that Carr came to her high school when she was 14 and tried to convince her to skip class to be with him, and, after she joined the lifeguard force, made inappropriate sexually oriented comments and “leered” at her.

She claimed Carr did not like seeing women in supervisory positions and resented her for wanting to test for a promotion.

Shortly after Robbins turned down an offer of a date by a friend of Carr’s, he asked her to accompany him on what he claimed was a training session on Aug. 4, 2011, her court papers say. She alleges he told her to ride on a rescue sled that he towed with his personal watercraft after dispatching himself on a call that actually was called off as a false alarm.

Instead of driving safely at about 5 mph, Carr moved at about seven times that speed, causing Robbins to be injured when her head slammed against the sled, according to her court papers, which say she “immediately feared that Carr was trying to kill or paralyze her.”

After that incident, Carr and other supervisors told her to give false information about how and when she was hurt, but she decided to tell the truth about what happened, according to her court papers.

“After Robbins reported the incident and other harassment, she was stalked and intimidated by other department personnel” and was afraid to leave her home.

“When I do, I feel I am being followed and I believe Dave Carr and the bros who are his friends are trying to scare me into not coming back to work and/or not talking about what happened to me,” Robbins alleged in her court papers.

City News Service