A Ventura County Superior Court judge ruled July 10 that Cynthia Chamberlain, who was fired last October from her job as an administrative assistant at the Blanchard Community Library in Santa Paula, California, can return to work with $10,000 in back pay and benefits.
The library board claimed Chamberlain was fired after a series of bad performance appraisals and that she retaliated by charging that Library Director Dan Robles was using library computers to download sexually explicit materials from the Internet. Robles was reprimanded over the incident but remains director.
Chamberlain's attorney argued that her client had exhausted all appropriate grievance procedures and that the board had erred by keeping no written records. The Los Angeles Times reported July 11 that the library's attorney said if Chamberlain reported for work she would be placed on an administrative leave while the library requests a stay of Judge John H. Hunter's order.
Posted July 20, 1998.