Judge Imposes Limits on Suits by Ex-Planning Chief : Government: Emotional distress claim ruled invalid, but Spalding can seek damages against city attorney.

Former San Diego Planning Director Robert Spaulding cannot sue the city for emotional distress over the loss of his job due to the City Hall sex-and-hush-money case but may pursue a legal claim against City Atty. John Witt, a Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday.

In a split decision that attorneys for both Spaulding and the city hailed as a victory, Judge Arthur Jones tentatively dismissed Spaulding’s emotional distress complaint against the city while permitting him to pursue his charge that Witt’s office committed legal malpractice in its handling of the case.

Spaulding’s emotional distress charge, Jones said, should be addressed not in court, but rather as a worker’s compensation complaint before the state Industrial Relations Department.

Although that ruling limits the city’s liability, Spaulding attorney Patricia Meyer expressed satisfaction with Jones’ decision, explaining that “the issue with Witt has always been the major issue of our suit.”

Moreover, if a court rules that improper behavior by Witt’s office contributed to Spaulding’s termination, the city could be financially responsible for any monetary award to the former planning director.

Spaulding, who resigned his $108,000-a-year job under pressure last May amid controversy over an affair with former city planner Susan M. Bray that cost the city $98,531 in a secret settlement arranged by former City Manager John Lockwood, is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages in the suit. He filed the suit after the city rejected his $2.75-million administrative claim last spring.

Though Spaulding contends that the affair with Bray was consensual, Bray argues that it was forced upon her and that she feared losing her job as a Gaslamp Quarter planner if she resisted her boss’s “unwelcome sexual advances.”

In the lawsuit, Spaulding argues that Witt erred in acting as his attorney in a harassment claim filed by Bray because he also represented the city itself, causing the city attorney’s office to be “saturated with conflicts of interest,” in the words of Spaulding’s other attorney, Michael Aguirre.

In assisting Lockwood in structuring the nearly $100,000 payment to Bray, Witt’s office inadequately represented Spaulding’s interests--specifically, by failing to guarantee his continued employment, the lawsuit claims.

Witt, however, has consistently denied any impropriety, and Michael Weaver, a private lawyer hired to represent the city and Witt, reiterated Tuesday that Witt was not responsible for “any damage” to Spaulding.