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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A woman is suing Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, alleging she was wrongfully terminated from her pharmacy supervisor job in 2022 for complaining about a supervisor's illegal recording of employee conversations as well as the same boss' inappropriate disbursement of a controlled substance.
Plaintiff Lin Nguyen's Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges discrimination, whistleblower retaliation and harassment, as well as a failure to prevent all three, plus wrongful termination and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Nguyen seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages in the suit brought Tuesday.
A Kaiser representative issued a statement Thursday regarding the suit.
"We have not yet been served with the lawsuit in question and it is not our practice to comment on pending litigation," the statement read. "We highly value our employees and we are committed to keeping them safe in the workplace. This includes protecting our employees from discrimination, harassment and retaliation."
Nguyen dedicated over a decade of her life to Kaiser, working her way up to a pharmacy supervisor position in October of 2017, and she regularly received positive performance reviews, the suit states.
In June 2019, the Baldwin Park Kaiser facility's outpatient pharmacy director retired and his replacement recorded Nguyen's workplace conversations, including one in October of that year when a co-worker told the plaintiff about an anticipated promotion of someone else within their office, the suit states.
The pharmacy director later sought to find out who leaked the information about the anticipated promotion, confronting Nguyen's co-worker with a recording of the conversation between Nguyen and her colleague, an action that left the plaintiff upset about eavesdropping actions she considered were done "surreptitiously and illegally," the suit states.
Nguyen complained about the alleged secret recordings to the appropriate department, but an ensuing investigation brought the plaintiff no satisfaction, according to the suit.
The pharmacy director subsequently called for a meeting with Nguyen and questioned the plaintiff about whether she had backdated records or forced others to do so, an accusation Nguyen contend was "demonstrably false," the suit states.
Nguyen also reported what she considered an inappropriate disbursement of a controlled substance medication, the suit states. But instead an investigation being opened, Nguyen was asked by a manager, "So you are now on their bad side, so you start complaining?," the suit states.
Nguyen's doctor placed her on medical leave because of the workplace stress she allegedly was enduring and when she returned she asked the pharmacy director for temporary reduced work hours because she "always felt anxious that someone was trying to get her," according to the suit, which further states that the plaintiff suffered a severe panic attack during the meeting.
In March 2022, while working the 3-day weekly schedule, Nguyen was confronted by the pharmacy director about longtime alleged fraud regarding continuing education units, the suit states
Although Nguyen was able to refute the allegation, the pharmacy director fired her three months later, the suit states.
Nguyen has suffered lost income as well as emotional distress, the suit states.