SLT pays ex-employee in multi-layered lawsuit
By Kathryn Reed
South Lake Tahoe has agreed to pay Leigh-Ellen Yarbrough $49,500 in what it calls a breach of contract case.
Her attorney says it was much more than that.
City Attorney Tom Watson said he had little to do with the case because it was handled by outside counsel and he was new to the city as the lawsuit was wrapping up.
While the council agreed to settle in November, the formal vote on the settlement was not taken until last month in closed session.
Several charges against the city were alleged in the lawsuit.
According to Jacqueline Mittelstadt, Yarbrough’s attorney, it all started when Yarbrough called 911 from the South Lake Tahoe Ice Arena to report a sex offender being near children. Yarbrough was a temporary part-time employee at the rink when it was still operated by the city and had a contract with the city to be an independent coach.
That wasn’t the first time Yarbrough had warned authorities about the sex offender’s presence.
The sex offender’s wife was a member of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission and said it was fine for him to be there because their daughter was skating.
Shortly thereafter Yarbrough was banned from the arena. And in the settlement agreement she is banned for the next three years.
During this time she lost her job, so part of the suit had to do with being wrongfully terminated.
“You can’t fire someone for whistle blowing,” Mittelstadt said.
The sex offender ultimately went to prison and the rec commissioner resigned.
“The community of South Lake Tahoe should be giving her a medal. For all we know she helped avert another Jaycee Lee Dugard situation,” Mittelstadt told Lake Tahoe News.
Mittelstadt said the most egregious part of the whole issue is “this is what every citizen should be doing to protect our children … calling 911 to protect our children. Nepotism and politics slammed this person.”
The city’s insurance company is footing the bill, according to Watson.
Good for her! It is disgusting how we blame the whistle blowers in our society. She sacrificed herself and her livelihood for the greater good of the children.
So Yarbrough was a temporary part-time employee and lost her job for doing the right thing. She was awarded nearly $50K and her attorney says she should get a medal. She does deserve a medal and reccognition, but if that is what she lost in wages, I think I want a temporary part-time job working there.
This stinks.
Sounds like she is the victim in this travesty. She does deserve recognition for standing up for what is right.
Old Road Cleats… I think you may not understand how settlements are negotiated. She lost her job forEVER, and was banned from the ice rink. Her settlement, which I think is low considering it is very hard to get a decent job in SLT – part-time or full-time, covers the long-term (future unemployment). The damage done to this employee for trying to do the right thing, is ongoing – she should be compensated for that damage as well. I can’t imagine that going through all of that publicly was worth $50K.
The perpetrator is now in PRISON – & his wife left the Commission. I wonder how she ever was appointed to a Commission that oversees recreation by youth as well as adults. Her logic board (thinking it was ok for him – her sex-offender husband, to be around other young children), is simply wrong. The City should be required to issue Ms. Yarbrough a commendation, and a Letter of Recommendation for future employment.
“Shortly thereafter Yarbrough was banned from the arena. And in the settlement agreement she is banned for the next three years.”
Banned from the arena for what?
Go on city council, hold your heads up high for your despicable behavior in not immediately responding to a citizen doing their job.
Heading behind your lawyers skirts shows what you are made of. Hide, hide, and hide doing your best to obfuscate the malfeasance. You must be proud.
The Public, The Taxpayer, The Ones Paying the Bills, should be told who gave the order to ban her from the rink, who gave the order to fire her, and who insisted she has to stay away from the rink. Again, the Public should know because we’re the ones footing the bills! That all this is kept secret from us explains why there is distrust in our City Govt!
And why pay a City Atty., if you’re still going pay for outside legal counsel? I guess if it’s not your money, why be prudent with it?
Another reason to dissolve the City, its misguided bureaucrats, its knucklehead decisions, and its unwise expenditures of public funds.
Leigh Ellen should indeed be awarded a medal. Had she not reported this sex offender, I would not have known that this man was a sex offender who was involved with my daughters figure skating club. It was only because I saw his arrest in the paper that I learned of his sex offender status. Angry and questioning why this man had been permnitted to be around children resulted in my daughter and I being ostracized from the rink. Providing evidence and information to the prosecution resulted in malicious lies against my family and most importantly about my daughter and more harassment. If any community should have taken this information seriously, it should have been South Lake Tahoe, Ca. I credit, admire and thank Leigh Ellen and her attorney for exposing the truth and taking action. Action that saved children. Including mine.
Parker….I agree!
Who is the fella and how serious was his offense?
In this day and age overzealous prosecutors do and will overcharge to get a guilty plea. There are many people who have been railroaded.
Never forget the McMartin case in SoCal where psychos (psychologists) convinced little toddlers to make up horrendous stories of sexual abuse and the psychos got away with it thanks to our rotten judiciary.
Suspicious-
There are things here we will never quite understand, and that is probably good. One of those is how the rink employee knew in the first place that there was a child molester present
But get a grip.
The child molester is NOT a part of this problem. What are you smoking? Your complaints of judicial and other professional malfeasance have nothing to do with this issue.
The fired employee according to the report brought this up twice. Once should have been sufficient.
What we do have here is a City with management who will do just about anything to hide the fact that all is not perfect, instead of dealing with an issue in a straight up manner in the first place.
Someone or some group here has the power to hire/fire/make judgments but not the sense to wield that power intelligently.
Suspicious mind, he went to prison. If you are truly interested in the truth, all you need to do is search local news stories about sex offender arrested at the ice rink. Period.
Bottom line is, had the City done the right thing from the beginning, tax payers wouldn’t be shelling out settlements. But they tried to hide it, and in the end, the truth prevailed…and paid.
Local municipalities have a strange desire to litigate, only to lose more often than win. They are consistently on the wrong side of the verdict.
One of these days, they’re going to bite off more than they can chew litigating a case against a private enterprise or person. At that point, they will become Mammoth Lakes (bankrupt as a result of litigation).
I thought the rink was under contract with private businessmen?
Just to clarify some of the historical facts… The Rec Center does a search and check for anyone coaching or affiliated with kids programs. But the person in question had FAILED to register (here’s the original story May 2011: http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/3799232-113/police-local-leadstories-leadstoriesivg).
At the time of the breaking of this story, the first rounds of layoffs due to budget issues hit several employees, this person was likely not fired as retribution, but decided to get compensation for being laid off like 11 or so others who suffered the same fate. Also, considering that Ms. Middlestadt was formerly City Attorney, doesn’t that give her certain inside information…it seems like a conflict of interest in some way.
Either way, I know the staff at the Rec Center does their best to ensure our kids are safe. They are families and locals just like us…it is a shame that the City Government would rather litigate and settle than stand up for their people…
Good for Leigh-Ellen. It should have been more. She was harrassed by current instructors there: taking her music, messing up her schedules, and bullying. Her kids skate there. As a PT employee she wasn’t laid off, she was forced out by ‘the click’ that supported the convicted child-sex offender’s family. The newly hired (and now departed) Parks & Recreation Recreation Director, Stan did nothing to stop the mess that was happening.
Parker asked who gave the order to ban her, and terminate her contract with the rink. I was very close to the debacle and was told from high up that Tony O’Rourke had given the order.
Leigh Ellen did an outstanding job at the arena and helped move programs forward when existing staff was transferred away and furloughed. I believe $50k is not a lot of money for loss of work/career and character assassination in this town.
Kae, unless I mis-read (always a possibility these days) your story lacks the dates this incident occurred. Which, in South Lake Tahoe, provide important perspective.
Granted, SLT has a couple of City Council-persons who’ve been on the Council so long that they’re no longer responsible for their pasts because they can’t remember (Retiree health insurance funding being the most notable recent lapse). But not long ago the Council hired a thug to be City Manager, now long gone, although his separation has never been fully explained. And the current City Manager was said to be mentored by the thug, although, in her defense, she’s certainly improved on his act.
But, with all the changes in City government (it’s hard to find anyone who can seriously document whether things are getting better or worse) I think it’s at least important to document who was in charge when a particular bit of manure hit the fan.
As if often the case when a settlement occurs, one side of the story is told and misinformation abounds. The story is inaccurate. Ms. Yarbrough is not banned from the Ice Arena in fact, she is there quite frequently enjoying the Ice Arena and skating. In addition, the City’s insurance company chose to settle this case. As Ms. Middelstadt is quite aware, the former City Manager and Parks and Recreation (Community Services) Director who made the decisions related to Ms. Yarbrough did not know she had called the police about someone who was at the Ice Arena. When a member of the public calls the police, the police do not pick up the phone and then call city staffers and employees to report who is calling into the police and why they are calling. The evidence of that is on the 911 tapes demonstrating dispatchers took the call and sent police to the scene, period. The issues related to Ms. Yarbrough’s case cannot adequately be tried on a blog, but her attorney chose to recommend a small settlement to her client rather than try the case. That is indicative of the confidence she had in her client’s position.
Thomas Watson:
I appreciate your remarks and thank you for sharing the other side of this topic.
I find it unfortunate that so many people prefer to hurdle toward being negatively critical rather than attempting to become informed about so many topics. Blatant statements of opinions as though they are fact are just speculative conjecture and should be prefaced by “I think that…”, otherwise people can just sound stupid.
How much did the outside attorney, and city staff time add to the settlement amount?
We were remiss to say she was completely banned from the arena. She is banned from making a living at the arena. The following is directly from the settlement agreement:
“No Future Employment, Contracting Relationship or Volunteer Coaching with the CITY or TSE for a Period of Three (3) Years from the Effective Date of this Agreement. As an express condition to this Agreement LEIGH-ELLEN YARBROUGH agrees, warrants and represents that SHE will not apply for, and if offered will not accept, any employment or enter into any independent contractor agreements with or by the CITY or TSE for a period of three (3) years form the EFFECTIVE DATE of the AGREEMENT. In addition, as a further express conditions of this Agreement, LEIGH-ELLEN YARBROUGH agrees that she will no engage in any volunteer coaching, mentoring or instructional activities, paid or unpaid, at the South Lake Tahoe Ice Arena, for a period for (3) years from the EFFECTIVE DATE of this AGREEMENT, with the exception of instructing her own children.”
LTN staff
What is unfortunate is that Ms. Yarbrough’s experience is representative of what regularly occurs in the operations of local municipalities.
Thanks for all of your support. There is so much more to this story and I can’t wait until my book is released later this year. For now, I’d like clarify something. Nice try Tom Watson but if you’d like, I’d be happy to post a copy of the letter I received from the city banning me from entering the building. It wasn’t until June of 2013 while at a mediation hearing in Sacramento Federal Courthouse, the city dismissed the ban and I was then able to enter the building. Per our settlement agreement, I’m not able to work at the arena for three more years. Not sure why but it’s apparent the city wants to continue to punish me for calling 911. From May of 2011-June 2013 I missed over 300 hours of my children’s activities because of this ban. For me as a parent, some of the most joyous times in life are watching my kids in sports. The city took that away from me and I’ll never get that time back. SHAME on you City of South Lake Tahoe.
This story is such a great illustration of the pure through and through stupidity of the Sex Offender Witch Hunt. Look at all the waste for nothing.
The “sex offender” was at the ice rink being a normal parent watching his daughter. He had every right to be doing that and harassers like Leigh-Ellen Yarbrough should get over it. Perhaps if she were supervising her children and anyone else that she was responsible for and protecting them from being harmed by ANYONE, then she wouldn’t have had to worry so much about a person simply being there watching his own child. This whole idea that “sex offenders” need to be kept away from certain locations is pure stupidity.
Further, I do notice that harassers like Yarbrough have failed to grow their big governments enough to get the rest of the their Registries created. For example, we don’t even Register people who shoot children at ice rinks. Why is that exactly? The reason is because the Sex Offender Registries have very little to do with “public safety”, “protecting children”, or any of those other lies. And they have everything to do with harassers who make themselves feel big by harassing other people.
I am glad that Yarbrough missed out on watching her kids because that is exactly what she is trying to steal from other people. There are no Americans who support the Sex Offender Registries.
The City of South Tahoe is being sued over their “sex offender” BS and they are going to lose. They will have to pay compensatory damages. Hopefully they will also have to pay punitive damages. But it is very unfortunate that the thieving, criminal politicians who created their laws in the first place will not be held personally accountable as they should be.