Former Democratic State Senator Joe Dunn has been fired by the California State Bar as executive director, just as he files a whistleblower lawsuit against the bar alleging that top officials ousted him because he tried to expose “egregious improprieties,” according to multiple news reports.
Dunn, who is a founding board member of Voice of OC, alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday that he is part of a group of anonymous whistle-blowers who complained to the bar’s trustees about alleged improprieties.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Dunn said in his suit that the whistle-blower complaints alleged “ethical breaches, prosecutorial lapses and fiscal improprieties” by State Bar President Craig Holden, some bar trustees and the bar’s chief trial counsel.
The lawsuit said that Dunn was fired because he had been identified as one of the whistle-blowers and that Holden had orchestrated the ouster.
Holden, a Los Angeles lawyer who was elected bar president in September, submitted “irregular expense accounts” to the bar and sought to usurp executive authority in a bid to eventually become executive director, the lawsuit alleges.
The suit says that one of the trustees had a longtime personal relationship with a lawyer in a firm that was paid $300,000 to investigate Dunn. The investigation was launched after a bar official whom Dunn had accused of misconduct filed a complaint against Dunn, according to the suit.
Dunn said he had received glowing performance evaluations, and his contract had been extended last year to 2016.
To read the full LA Times story, click here.