Former City Employee's Lawsuit Claims Migraines, Discrimination

The San Clemente City Council will discuss a lawsuit by a former employee who claims he suffered mental anguish and migraines because of his treatment by supervisors, and who says the city’s actions resulted in his loss of post-employment benefits.

The city, which denies the allegations, will discuss the case in closed session at its Tuesday meeting.

Nabil Toma, a former city engineer, sued the city in March, claiming disability discrimination, wrongful termination and retaliation, emotional distress and related allegations. He's seeking at least $25,000 in damages, not including court costs.

(See the full texts of Toma's civil complaint and the city's answer in the PDF files attached to this article.)

According to the lawsuit, the city hired Toma as an associate civil engineer on July 5, 2000, promoted him twice, then fired him without warning or cause on June 28, 2010.

The complaint says Toma suffers "chronic migraines [that] have left him in terrible ongoing pain for hours and sometimes days," a condition that was "exacerbated by stress" intentionally inflicted on him by his managers.

Toma said he was caught in the middle of communication problems between two bosses: Bill Cameron, the public works director/city engineer, and Tom Bonigut, the assistant city engineer. The situation caused stress and subsequent migraines, his complaint states.

Toma also claims Cameron was under political pressure because of a couple troublesome development projects and that Cameron responded to that pressure by taking it out on Toma, berating him in front of other employees, subsequently causing stress and migraines.

The city denies this, but said in its formal response that even if the allegations were true, they don't amount to a hostile work environment and that Toma didn't take steps to address his complaints administratively.

After Toma was fired, he says, the city failed to notify him that he had only 120 days to apply for post-employment health insurance through the city. He failed to meet the date, although the city said its staff met its legal obligations.

The city also said Toma's stress or migraines were part of a psychological condition he already had before starting the job, and weren't caused by any action or inaction by staffers.

The case is set for a jury trial in April.