Ex-PRC worker wins whistle-blower case

March 06--A former Public Regulation Commission employee, his wife and his attorney teared up in the First District Court in Santa Fe on Wednesday after a jury found the agency had violated the state's Whistleblower Protection Act and awarded the man $110,000 for emotional distress due to his termination from the agency.

Maurice A. Bonal Jr., a former PRC information-technology manager, sued the PRC in 2011, claiming his superiors had fired him in retaliation after he reported that some bureau chiefs and other employees were improperly using state computers to visit adult porn sites and other inappropriate websites during work time.

Bonal's attorney, longtime family friend Diego Zamora, said he expects the state to appeal the jury's verdict. But Steve French, an attorney for the PRC, declined to comment about a possible appeal and referred questions to the state General Services Department.

"It's been a long battle," said another attorney for Bonal, David K. Thomson, after the verdict. "He [Bonal] deserves a lot of credit for his courage. I mean, you are out there. During the trial, they were still accusing him of things."

The jurors sat through five days of lengthy testimony that dissected the difference between a "hit" and a "visit" to a website, graphic examples of porn sites allegedly accessed by state employees and a detailed timeline of events that culminated in Bonal's dismissal from his job in October 2010.

Zamora said he thinks the pages of evidence from a website tracking program helped convince the jury to side with Bonal.

Attorneys for the PRC denied any of the employees named in the lawsuit had been visiting porn sites or improperly surfing the Internet during work. Additionally, they said a computer program the PRC had installed to filter websites was blocking access to legitimate sites that employees needed to complete their job duties. They said Bonal was fired Oct. 31, 2010, for misconduct and insubordination because he had refused to remove the website blocks when he was asked to do so. They also claimed Bonal had violated the state's security policy by downloading more than 2,000 agency documents to a personal thumb drive.

A day after his firing from the PRC -- on Nov. 1, 2010 -- Bonal was hired as the information technology director at the General Services Department, a higher-paying job.

Bonal, the son of a former Santa Fe city councilor of the same name, had worked for the PRC for two years without incident until early August 2010, when he alerted his bosses about the potential misuse of the Internet by Ben Montoya, then chief of the Insurance Fraud Bureau. He testified that Montoya had visited several inappropriate websites, including www.miamidolphincheerleaders.com, hollywoodtuna.com and megaporn.com.

In his testimony, Bonal claimed he alerted upper management, including then Administrative Services Division director Juan Rios, about his concerns and asked how he should proceed.

"Instead of a pat on the back, he gets a kick in the rear," Thomson said.

Bonal's attorneys claimed Montoya had staff investigate their client's background a day later. The attorneys said the staff had tried to accuse Bonal of lying about a felony on his job application two years earlier. According to Bonal's lawsuit, however, he had pleaded to charges in the late 1990s, but had completed his probation and was not found guilty of a felony under New Mexico law.

Bonal's lawsuit named the PRC and Ben Montoya as defendants, along with Leroy Aragon, chief administrator for former PRC member Jason Marks, and Hughanne Maxwell-Loux, the PRC's human-resources director. The lawsuit also named unknown John Does 1-10, who are described in the lawsuit as PRC employees, officials or supervisors.

Bonal's lawsuit sought $150,000 in damages. The jury awarded $110,000. Under the state law, however, Bonal could receive double damages, interest dating to his termination, and attorney's fees and other court costs.

This was the second jury award to a plaintiff against the PRC under the Whistleblower Protection Act. On Jan. 18, 2013, a jury awarded former Insurance Division compliance director Aaron Feliciano$344,345 in damages and $250,000 in legal fees.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @stacimatlock.

___

(c)2014 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.)

Visit The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.) at www.santafenewmexican.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services