corrupt administration misconduct by management a long investigation that was impacting morale in the department corrupt counsel yes what was the corruption the collusion between mental health you know agreement between people to proceed in a particular manner well i think that the corruption you know is very serious matter to mr bailiff to you know was first suspended and eventually terminated based on the issues found in the mess in the investigation you know if if which i posit is what was happening was that the administration had hired investigation investigators to come up with a way to get rid of  who provide service to the public is being affected further the unfair includes actions taken by administration and ended up depriving the department of a seasoned and long standing county employee who  think it doesn't do me any good to say i am concerned about the rain now so that doesn't give us any you understand my question i believe so you want i want to know what they represent or as a matter of objective proof other than their own state of mind that the members and that the investigations were going on longer and then they should have been going on all right now that i presume their judgment about what should happen when investigation should go on or shouldn't go on it shouldn't take a year their own state of mind about judgment about who's good who's bad that the investigators were fraternizing with and the at with the employees which they were supposed to be investigating and that  remarks there were act there were actually two complaints that were being investigated one was the issue of the woman's complaints of sexual harassment the other was the issue of claudia lakes and bob ellis there was  a shouting match where there were numerous witnesses to what was going on and that was a big issue that the and mr present this business were complaining about because they actually had witnessed what had happened and then they saw the investigators having lunch with the people they were supposed to be investigating they saw the investigators you know offering to read the dissertation and they ate and they infer that there's some kind of collusion going on because of the relationship between the investigators and the employees and they were seeking to just to bring this to light they weren't complaining that mr balance was being investigated the complaints were about how the investigation was prolong and how it was taking place and they just sought to brought these to bring these issues to light and for their supervisors they were not promoted and what evidence is there in the record to show that that's causally connected to the exercise of their free speech well if you look at the record and the time frame in which these actions occurred and it shows the ca required to present evidence as to why the actions they took where the actions they took in terms of who they hired and mr and it came out at trial with mr overt acts testimony that one he had destroyed the energy records specifically in regard to mr president his business and also that he had concocted for the purposes of litigation some kind of pass fail score sheet that never existed during the actual interview he he came out as as a big liar at trial and between the time frame in which they presented this evidence and the actions which were taken by them the non promotion they applied for four different and promotions and they were continuously rejected and was there any indication that they were not qualified for the promotion now both are both extremely well qual fied in terms of  status and their education with the county you know that the county will argue that ms business wasn't qualified because she didn't have a california license but that was specifically not a requirement and that came out at trial as well for a supervisory position  supervisors that were hired into these positions that mr present is now were applying for one fact not qualified and that was another issue of truth that came out during trial when there was testimony that both had supervisory experience arnstein and john kept savaged when you went to their resumes to look at their supervisor experience and was there so while the people testifying at trial said oh we hired them because they were more qualified tha supervisory experience when you looked at the resumes supervisory experience was not on the resumes so that again was more evidence that was concocted by the county to support their position that was in turn the reason that they counsel the people who  complaints were first taken to their immediate supervisor and as county employees when the concerns want to address they kept going further and further up the chain of command to the point at which they called and they requested a meeting with the head of the department of mental health i'm being paid to do this speech today in the case in the course of the speech it was a district attorney who was being paid to make a speech for the less he was giving the grand jury testimony as part of his job so it's not incidental things it is you are paid to make the speech when he was asked to appear because he's still the grand jury normally decides who it's going to hear instead of an employer's saying i'm going to hire you to testify and go from a grand jury and i'm not going to hire anybody else to do it you're the guys going to do it  susie's who presents to the grand jury which is a little different scenario because then that person is hired and knows that part of his or her responsibility will be presentations to the grand jury but if you are not a prosecutor biggest case one of the issues we would rush back and forth in the briefs is whether there was retaliation it's important to focus on the very narrow issue before the court things emotional lemonade granted to can about liability or damages based on anything other than the decision where to place it on reinstatement everything else is barred by the special occasions but was not cross appealed or done laughs so the question is is the decision to put him in the position that he was put in when he was reinstated and found retaliation i understand that then we get to the only thing you have to in order for a judgment as a matter of law to be successful you have to show that no reasonable jur less telling the truth when he said the supervisor got angry and as a result when he was reinstated he was put in a less desirable position how can we second guess that credibility determination by the jury not the players making is not the jury's assessment of the trial ability page forty eight of the initial brief and combine and response rate is the one that cites the evidence on that but what actually happened press ok and what's the actual part of the record we can testimony regarding the reaction to his appearance before the grand jury and now what page is that testimony not being upset about the substance of anything is that it's an important function to be made here getting back to the question of whether there was in the public interest involved for president was purely internal grievance matter and it his in his fight against corruption in your view in order to gain protection the question goes back to what the public would be interested legitimately in what they are saying or doing think quite that pinpoint but a number of cases have talked about internal grievances internal workplace to speak like there are a number of grievances i'm unhappy with you know and they don't give me a job and i'm a  genius you know i think of jim croce song about the trying to get a job at the car wash and they say we don't need any more geniuses we got enough of them here so i'm a genius and i won't promote me that's out now that's not protected speech but when you've got a situation here where you've got a supervisor possibly who's being heris just because of activity this undertaking and you've got voice you voice support for him for for his crusade you're saying that's it's on summary judgment and the judge does it ok i have to hear the affidavits or the decorations or the depositions and i make a decision that's one thing but here the jury actually heard conflicting testimony both sides say whatever you want to say that's your all your testimony and then the jury jury the trial jury disagreed with your assertion here i mean it seems to me implicitly the trial jury found that there was there was possibly a connection there there was zero evidence to show this was based on an investigation that had gone back to march present and never said a word to anybody about speak measuring just like we understand your point that you might want to take some time for me but on the cross appeal counsel this is your time for rebuttal on the direct appeal in your response on the c you say during the january eleventh two thousand supervisors meeting the defendant crippled or became upset on hearing the information that they had us reported to the grand i journey or are judged and reports to supervisors that there was misconduct by the investigators or the procurement of a search warrant that i can totally understand as being speech related to the inner workings of your job that is not the case with mr bayliss his reports in the grand jury testimony he reported a number of different issues as to what had happened but none of it were that specific inner workings of the job  some of his complaints addressed issues that he was concerned about with regards to how old the department of mental health was operating in terms of  so if you look at all of their speech as a whole overriding interest is the unfairness with which mr bayliss was being treated by the supervisors you know they they were concerned because they witnessed what happened and then they saw the investigators who i totally disregarded what they said and their allegations were that the investigation was a sham it was this here and pool is instructive on this case in that they had no personal interest in what was going on their interest in bringing wrongdoing to light what was happening to mr bayliss was because they thought it was unfair and another issue is that that was raised by opposing counsel is that this speech was not brought to light in terms of the public and the supreme court has repeatedly held first and javan then in conic and most recently in rankin that it does not need to be taken to the public in order to to see first amendment protection and i believe to ask you know how many physicians are you complaining about that your clients were not promoted to for for now this is the first case i think this comes to mind where two people are simultaneously claiming that they were overlooked in promotion now obviously both of them couldn't be hired for the same position and how do we shake that out looking at each of these women would we look at the evidence that you've talked about here that your clients were better qualified than somebody else now when we  forth there were there's more than one and there's more than one action and issue of promotion that was taken in this case that your issue is the fact that neither of them was given any of the positions supports your claim that there was suggestion that they would have shown anything more favorable than the testimony people for promotions and for hiring and that's why you make contemporaneous records this is very difficult after the fact to sort out your impressions regarding each candidate because they have a tendency to run together after awhile and it's really difficult months after the fact to go back and try to reconstruct what happened during the interview process that's almost impossible to do it from memory that's one of the four of interviews so as a final conclusion i think the trial court