Filner wants San Diego to pay:
The attorney for San Diego’s embattled mayor says the city failed to provide Bob Filner state-required sexual harassment training and therefore should pay to defend him against a lawsuit by his former communications director, who alleges he asked her to work without wearing panties.
Filner’s lawyer Harvey Berger made the argument in a letter to City Attorney Jan Goldsmith one day before the City Council voted unanimously to deny Filner funds for his legal defense. Local media published parts of the letter Wednesday.
Berger said the training was scheduled but the city trainer canceled and did not reschedule.
“While, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, many might argue that `you don’t need a weatherperson to tell you which way the wind blows,’ and an adult male should not need sexual harassment training,” Filner may not be facing a lawsuit today if he had undergone the classes, Berger wrote.
“This is not an excuse for any inappropriate behavior which may have occurred, but having conducted sexual harassment training many times over the years, I have learned that many — if not most — people do not know what is and what is not illegal sexual harassment under California law. There is a very, very good reason for mandatory sexual harassment training; if nothing else it makes people think about the subject, and how they interact with their fellow employees,” Berger wrote.
But guess who canceled that training?
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s office canceled multiple new employee and management training sessions in the first months of his term, a former top city official said late Wednesday. The sessions included direction to complete legally required sexual harassment training, two City Hall sources with knowledge of the situation said.
These statements contradict the version of events offered by Filner’s attorney Harvey Berger in a letter to City Attorney Jan Goldsmith. In the letter, Berger contends the city is liable for Filner’s legal fees in his sexual harassment lawsuit because of the failed training. Berger claims that city trainers “unilaterally cancelled” the sessions and never rescheduled.
Why should he take a sexual harassment training course, when he is already an expert at it? What more could he learn?
@Smorgasbord: Now his lawyer is saying if Filner would have had the course he wouldn’t have behaved the way he did. And of course San Diego is responsible for this. But, of course he was offered the opportunity to have such a course and declined!! Filner is a slime and needs to be gone ASAP!!
Is this where Democrats want to stand on this issue? That, unless someone tells you you are not supposed to sexually harass women, you shouldn’t be expected to know not to?
Remind me again, WHO wages a war on women?
@Common Sense: #2
He was contacted several times to sign up for it, but declined each time. I guess he figured he knew all he needed to know about the subject.