A judge has thrown out a lawsuit initiated by Santa Clara’s former city attorney. The ruling on the lawsuit against the city bars him from filing another one on the same grounds.
Brian Doyle worked as the city attorney until the city council fired him in 2021. His lawsuit alleged the council fired him as retaliation for refusing to hold a closed session because he believed the council intended to break the law.
At a December 2020 council meeting, Council Member Raj Chahal requested the council consider holding a closed session. That meeting was to discuss the city’s appeal of a California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) lawsuit. The city lost that lawsuit, which claimed its at-large system disenfranchised minority voters, but Doyle appealed the ruling.
The session came shortly after the election where the council majority shifted. Many of those on the council campaigned on platforms that vowed to end costly litigation. Among that litigation was the CVRA lawsuit.
This caused Doyle to believe the newly elected council aimed to, at the behest of the 49ers, circumvent the appeal behind closed doors, something he seemed to believe was his prerogative alone. During a presentation on the closed-session request, Doyle told Chahal that he had “serious ethical issues” with the approach.
He demanded that Chahal tell him what exactly he wanted to discuss in closed-session, threatening to not show up if he didn’t.
“Do you contemplate having any action at the closed session?” Doyle asked.
“I hope so, because that is what the clo-” Chahal said before Doyle cut him off.
“What is the possible action you would take at the closed session, because I can’t even imagine what action you could take,” Doyle said, interrupting.
“I don’t decide the actions before the discussions,” Chahal said.
“Why are you hiding from the public what your intentions are?” Doyle said. “You can’t meet if I’m not there … I don’t know why you’re playing this game. I think the public deserves to know what you’re up to.”
Through his lawyer Christopher Boscia, Doyle claimed in his complaint that Chahal “angrily and threateningly screamed” at him during this exchange. Doyle repeated his claim that Chahal “threatened” him when he told Doyle he was dodging his responsibility as the city attorney by refusing to attend the closed session.
In his complaint, Doyle claimed he “reasonably believed” many council members had quid-pro-quo agreements with the 49ers. His evidence for this was that Vice Mayor Anthony Becker and Council Member Kevin Park “spoke familiarly with” CVRA plaintiffs and “expressed views identical” to them at council meetings.
This perceived collusion as well as statements by 49ers lobbyists expressing a desire to see Doyle fired formed the heart of Doyle’s issue. His lawsuit sought compensation for loss of wages and damage to his reputation, claiming that his salary as interim city attorney for Merced was “significantly less” than the $320,000 salary he collected from Santa Clara. He is now unemployed.
In response, the city’s attorney for the case, Arthur Hartinger, with Renne Public Law Group, wrote that Doyle’s claim is “unsupported and preposterous” writing that Doyle’s suspicion that the council intended to break the law was “based on pure speculation.”
“This case has never made any sense because the underlying premise – that Doyle could speculate that something inappropriate might happen in closed session, and therefore, he could lawfully decline to have a closed session – is absurd,” Hartinger wrote. “If something happened inappropriately in closed session, then Doyle could object or resign. But of course, Doyle simply could not have known what might have occurred in the close session.”
Further, Hartinger wrote that Doyle “riddles his complaint with insinuations of backdoor dealings with the 49ers.” Because newly elected members campaigned on platforms that vowed to end the CVRA lawsuit, Doyle saw it as evidence that they colluded with the team. However, Hartinger wrote, a Supreme Court ruling — City of Fairfield vs. Superior Court — specifies that such campaigning does not create a conflict of interest.
Judge Amber Rosen agreed that the city’s criticism that Doyle’s suspicions were conjecture “have merit,” especially since Doyle did not object to subsequent closed sessions on the same topic.
“[Doyle’s] suspicion of illegal activity based on the ‘highly unusual’ activities taken by Chahal to place the CVRA litigation on the agenda for closed session without consultation with [Doyle] does not demonstrate, with particularity, that illegal activity is afoot,” Rosen wrote.
Rosen dismissed Doyle’s lawsuit with prejudice, which means he cannot file another lawsuit on the same grounds. That ruling allows the city to recover its lawyer’s fees from Doyle. In response to an email asking whether the city intends to recover costs incurred fighting Doyle’s lawsuit, the city’s spokesperson, Janine De la Vega, wrote that the city does not comment on “pending litigation.”
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“Doyle claimed in his complaint that Chahal angrily and threateningly screamed at him…” In all the years Chahal has been on the City Council, I don’t recall him ever screaming at or threatening anyone. That false claim sounds very familiar to the trumped up accusations Gillmor and Watanabe made against Becker. An independent investigation found their allegations unsubstantiated as well.
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The City should recover costs from Doyle, he already helped waste $6-million taxpayer dollars.
Once again Doyle demonstrates the results of the quality of his legal expertise. It’s fitting that he got the same outcome in his personal matter that he did in the cases he initiated on behalf of the City. And this time he’s going to pay, instead of taxpayers.
Maybe Gillmor will lend him some money.