Ex-Fire Chief Loses Suit Over Job Elimination

RIVERSIDE —  Norco city officials did not act improperly when they eliminated Fire Chief Don Johnson’s job in 1983, a Riverside County Superior Court jury found Thursday.

The jury, on a 9-3 first ballot vote, rejected the former chief’s claim that eliminating his position was merely a pretext for firing him.

“We had confidence all the way,” said City Manager John Donlevy. “The facts are there.”

Johnson’s attorney, Fred J. Knez of Santa Ana, had argued that Donlevy, then new to the city, wanted to get rid of Johnson without a “fair and honest reason,” so he “finessed it around to a job elimination.”

Norco was in the midst of budget cutting when Johnson’s post was eliminated, countered Cyrus J. Lemmon of San Bernardino, the city’s attorney in the case. “The city was dealing with budget problems,” he told the jury.

City Council Vote

And the decision to eliminate the position, he argued, was made not by Donlevy, but by a vote of the City Council when it adopted its 1983-84 budget, which included only 11 employees in a fire department that had employed 19 just two years earlier.

“Mr. Johnson is a big-city fire department person,” Lemmon said. “An 11-person department--a squad--doesn’t need an administrator.”

Another Fire Department supervisor, Richard Smetana, was retained to head the department as “division chief,” Lemmon said, because “he fit best in this particular job. . . . It was a judgment call.”

The city already had closed the newer of its two fire stations in 1982--just 2 1/2 years after it opened--because voters turned down a plan to override Proposition 13, the landmark property-tax reduction measure enacted by California voters in 1978.

50 Jobs Cut

City officials had also cut about 50 jobs, including those in the Fire Department, and turned to outside contractors to provide most services for the city’s 20,000 residents.

“A red herring has been set up here, a straw man,” Lemmon said. “. . . Mr. Donlevy did not fire Mr. Johnson.”

In his closing argument, Johnson’s attorney had asked the jury to award damages for lost wages in the three years since he lost his job, and for the next five years until he would have retired.

Knez estimated the lost wages and benefits to total more than $123,000. Since he left Norco, Johnson has worked in Saudi Arabia and now works as a consultant to the El Segundo Fire Department, checking building plans.