UCSD professor files new retaliation lawsuit against San Diego County

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — Nathan Fletcher is at the center of another legal battle over alleged retaliation against someone who reported harassment allegations against his former supervisor, more than a year after a high-profile sexual misconduct lawsuit disgraced him.

The new lawsuit was filed earlier this week against San Diego County by UC San Diego professor Juli Beth Hinds, who said she was wrongfully denied two government contracts shortly after she reported a student’s claim that Fletcher had bullied her to the university’s Title IX office.

Fletcher was a professor of practice in the Department of Political Science when the student informed Hinds of the alleged harassment during an office hour visit, the complaint states.

Hinds’ allegations were first made public last year in a document that serves as a precursor to a lawsuit, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The loss of those contracts, she said, resulted in a loss of income of more than $280,000.

FOX 5/KUSI reached out to Fletcher’s attorneys for comment but did not receive a response.

Her lawsuit is the latest in a spate of claims filed in the wake of a lawsuit filed last year against Fletcher by a former San Diego Metropolitan Transit System employee, Grecia Figueroa, who also named MTS as a defendant in the case.

In the ongoing lawsuit, Figueroa alleges that Fletcher, then chairman of the MTS board of directors, sexually harassed and assaulted her on at least two occasions – incidents that she says directly led to her sudden dismissal from the transit company.

Shortly after the allegations became public, Fletcher resigned from all political office, calling his conduct “undoubtedly inappropriate.” However, he has repeatedly denied the allegations of sexual harassment, instead admitting to consensual interactions with Figueroa.

An independent investigation into Figueroa’s allegations commissioned by MTS appeared to disprove at least part of her complaint, concluding that her firing was not retaliatory but due to performance issues.

Several packets of messages released during the evidence in their trial and in the early stages of a defamation countersuit Fletcher filed against his accuser also seem to indicate some sort of consensual relationship between the two.

Regardless, the legal problems have long since expanded beyond the former supervisor, embroiling MTS and now the County of San Diego in the mess.

Earlier this year, an MTS executive sued the transit agency for retaliation related to its handling of Figueroa’s allegations against Fletcher. Emily Outlaw, the company’s information officer, claimed she was unfairly rebuffed by her superiors after asking questions about when they learned of the sexual harassment allegations.

What is the status of Figueroa’s lawsuit

On Friday, attorneys for Fletcher and Figueroa met for a hearing on several motions. Among other things, the former supervisor asked for parts of his accuser’s complaint to be removed from the file and to compel the disclosure of certain information as part of the evidentiary hearing.

Judge Matthew Braner, who was hearing the case, granted some of the motions but struck out certain parts of the complaint that dealt with out-of-court settlement negotiations and that referred to Fletcher’s wife, union leader Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher, and his children.

However, the judge refused to remove other parts of the complaint that Fletcher had requested to be removed, including a paragraph containing detailed comments accusing him of fraud. Those comments were left under an Instagram post in September 2022 – several months after the first alleged assault.

As for Figueroa’s claims, the judge granted a motion to compel certain answers to a special interrogatory. Fletcher’s lawyers had tried to stop that motion on the grounds that they could respond to a “pattern allegation.”

This included asking Fletcher to admit that he had kissed “another woman” outside of his marriage in the past five years.

His lawyer, Sean McKavey, argued on Friday that the question about kissing other women was “not a disputed fact” and therefore did not need to be included in the evidentiary questionnaire. The judge disagreed and ultimately allowed the question to go ahead.

“What is useless to one is useful to another,” Braner said on Friday. “I will not prohibit the plaintiff (Figueroa) from taking a different view.”

Braner rejected a motion to compel answers to several other questions on the grounds that he believed they were “too broad” or “substantively identical” to requests made in previous motions.

Among the questions on which he refused to compel was a request to produce all formal and informal complaints of sexual harassment made against Fletcher by other parties.

Figueroa’s attorney, Mary Ann Gallagher, cited Hinds’ Title IX complaint as an example of an “informal complaint” that could have been included but was not. The judge recommended a “more tailored and targeted” motion to include that information in the disclosure.

During Friday’s hearing, the two parties also discussed a series of questions in Figueroa’s questionnaire for Fletcher about his problems with alcohol abuse. Last year, he spent time in a treatment center out of state for substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder.

McKavey called the question “extremely vexatious” during the hearing, and Braner seemed to agree. The judge noted, however, that he would make a decision on whether the question went too far at a later hearing and that he might still include it in the evidence.

“In taking evidence, the court asks questions as a gatekeeper. I intend to enforce that very diligently with respect to that type of questioning,” Braner said. “This lawsuit is about pattern allegations, and at this point, with the liberal standard that I have to apply, I think it’s a reasonable question. But I repeat, I agree with you. There is a limit, and I will enforce it.”

The parties are scheduled to meet again in about two weeks for further evidentiary proceedings. A civil trial in the case is expected to begin in early February 2025, assuming no further delays in the coming months.

The other cases facing MTS and San Diego County, as well as the defamation countersuit filed by Fletcher, are still in the early stages. No hearing dates have been set in either case for several months, according to court records.