Victoria Adams’ Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. A representative of the District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the suit filed Tuesday, Nov. 29, because it is pending litigation.
Adams was hired in 1985 and eventually appointed to the position of assistant district attorney. She was the only member of the executive management team under administration of former District Attorney Jackie Lacey who remained after current District Attorney George Gascón was sworn in in 2020 and she was the only one with any management experience, the suit states. Despite what she believed was chaos on the team, Adams tried to work with her colleagues and mentor them, the suit states. Adams later accepted Gascón’s offer to take the position of chief of staff while continuing to supervise three bureaus, according to the suit.
However, Adams repeatedly complained to Gascón during executive management team meetings that some of his progressive directives, including those involving the three-strikes law, cash bail for misdemeanor crimes and resentencing were unlawful, the suit states. Adams also expressed concern about Gascón’s hiring in early 2021 of criminal defense attorney Lawrence Middleton to investigate officer-involved-shooting cases that Lacey had declined to prosecute, the suit states.
In July 2021, Gascón without warning removed Adams from her chief of staff position and gave it to someone with less experience, the suit states. Gascón later “effectively removed” Adams from the executive management team and she no longer received information about the team from Gascón and his top advisers, according to the suit. Gascón also ended Adams’ supervision of the Bureau of Prosecution Support Operations as well as the murder resentencing unit, the suit alleges.
“Had plaintiff not repeatedly disclosed the unlawfulness of Gascon’s various special directives … Gascón would not have taken any of these adverse actions against her,” the suit states.
In May, Gascón demoted Adams from assistant district attorney of special operations to assistant district attorney of special projects, meaning she went from supervising hundreds of attorneys and other staff members in multiple bureaus to overseeing a secretary, the suit states. Adams does not supervise any attorneys, has no oversight of cases, provides no input on any policy matters and basically does clerical work, the suit states.
“No one in the DA’s Office communicates with plaintiff in any meaningful way,” the suit states. “Plaintiff has been banished onto an island where she has no meaningful work to perform.”
Adams will “never recover from this completely humiliating demotion, which will be the tragic end of her dedicated and accomplished nearly four-decades-long history of service to the county of Los Angeles,” the suit states.
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Elias says
All of you have no idea what you are talking about so it’s best you just don’t talk at all
James Madison says
…because free speech only belongs to those you endorse.
hypocrite
Tim Scott says
Please be specific as to where I “don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Gascon did run on a reform platform. Period.
He did get elected. Period.
He did institute those reforms, according to the plaintiff herself. Period.
She resisted those reforms, again, by her own admission. Period.
She should not have been lateraled, or demoted, she should have been fired. And she still should be.
The VOTERS wanted the reforms. They put a DA in place, over her, to institute those reforms. She apparently bucked against the reforms the voters wanted from day one. Undoubtedly she is a major player in the endless stream of fact free op-eds undermining the DA. Undoubtedly she has participated in fomenting the expensive failed recall efforts. All of that energy could have been put into obeying the will of the people, but she opted for a different path. That path should lead straight out the door.
Stinger says
….speaking of karens…
Tim Scott says
The DA ran on a reform platform, and got elected. The elected DA institutes the reform programs that he promised to institute. An ADA, who is not elected, refuses to support the reforms that the DA promised the voters he would institute.
The ADA shouldn’t have been lateraled, or demoted…she should have been fired, and she still should.
Adam Champion says
Ludicrous.
Taxpayers pay for this person to demand her own terms of employment, devoid of management oversight.
In what world would any private company put up with that kind of BS?
She got ‘horizontaled’.
It happens. It is/was a message.
In a public company you’d either get the message and find another job, or make the best of it and perhaps cruise to retirement.
But no.
This crank demands that she be highly paid ($320k in 2021) AND PROMOTED according to her terms, no matter of she obstructs management, costing taxpayers, and defies authority.
What a spoiled brat.
But you know, we allowed public employee unions to put this kind of power into their member’s minds, and it costs taxpayers in the end.
Stinger says
Yeah… You noticed that bit of karenly entitlement, too, eh?
That’s what Gascon has been having to deal with all this time. It obvious that the DA’s office is filled with a bunch of over-entitled screaming little karens who think they have more authority than they ever should