For the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, San Diego County Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nick Yphantides was one of the most visible medical figures representing the county’s response to the disease outbreak.
But within about two months, Yphantides stopped appearing publicly, and about a year into the pandemic, he was fired from his position. On Tuesday, attorneys for Yphantides and the County of San Diego gave opening statements in a trial over the reasons for his termination.
Yphantides, known to many as “Dr. Nick,” alleges the county wrongfully discriminated against him because of his bipolar disorder, which manifested because of the stress and long hours related to the pandemic response. He contends the county illegally fired him rather than providing the necessary accommodations so he could work while dealing with his mental health.
The case is about “a doctor that cared too much (and) an employer that cared too little,” Aaron Olsen, one of Yphantides’ attorneys, told the jurors Tuesday in federal court in San Diego.
Among the questions the jurors will be asked to decide is if Yphantides’ firing, and the county’s alleged failure to accommodate his needs, violated the Fair Employment and Housing Act, the California Family Rights Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Dr. Nick Yphantides, then San Diego County’s chief medical officer, speaks in early 2020 about COVID-19 flanked by Public Health Officer Wilma Wooten and Medical Director Eric McDonald.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda/Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Attorneys for the county assert Yphantides did not inform them of his mental condition, and that he was fired not because of his bipolar disorder, but rather for behaving inappropriately. They say he pressured another county employee to arrange vaccines for a wealthy couple who was not yet eligible; sent inappropriate private messages to a county nurse who was his subordinate; and sent sexually-charged messages to the mayor of San Marcos.
Firing Yphantides was complicated for his superiors because they were friends outside of work, but the doctor’s conduct made it a “simple decision,” Corrie Klekowski, an attorney representing the county from the law firm Quarles & Brady, told the jury.
Klekowski said the main question for the jurors will be to determine what the county knew and when. She told the jurors that it was only after he was fired, and only after he filed his lawsuit, that Yphantides claimed to know he was manic when behaving inappropriately.
“He didn’t tell the county that at the time,” Klekowski told the jurors.
But Olsen told the jury the county did know Yphantides was experiencing the symptoms of bipolar disorder, in part because his actions during that time were so out of character.
Yphantides, a 1992 graduate of UC San Diego medical school, had worked as a consultant for the county since 2009 and was hired full time as the county’s first chief medical officer in 2016. He had previously gained some national recognition for his 2004 book, “My Big Fat Greek Diet,” which chronicled how he lost more than 270 pounds.
Olsen told the jury that his client was especially sensitive to disease outbreaks not just because he had a master’s degree in public health, but because he had helped lead the county’s response to the 2009 swine flu pandemic, which claimed the life of his father.
Yphantides was among the county health officials who announced a local state of emergency Feb. 14, 2020, weeks before the statewide announcement on March 4. It was a declaration Yphantides pushed for, Olsen said. The doctor also had a high profile in several other pandemic-related announcements in early 2020 and often joined in daily press briefings with county Public Health Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten, Supervisors Nathan Fletcher and Greg Cox, and Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director of epidemiology and immunization services for the county.
But Klekowski told the jury Tuesday that his public appearances came to a halt by the end of March 2020 because the county’s chief administrative officer, Helen Robbins-Meyer, began receiving complaints about Yphantides speaking too long and quoting Bible verses during news conferences. Klekowski said that as county officials worked long hours over the next several months in response to the pandemic, Yphantides was being “divisive” and had become a distraction.
In October 2020, Yphantides took medical leave “when he experienced alarming suicidal ideation caused, in part, by several weeks of sleepless nights,” his attorneys wrote in a trial brief. He returned to work in November of that year, but took a second leave in mid-January. By early March, he informed his superiors he was ready to return to work, but by that time, the county was investigating reports that he had pressured another county employee to get two friends, a hotelier and his wealth-manager wife, to the front of the vaccine line. The county soon learned about the alleged inappropriate messages to the nurse and the San Marcos mayor.
Yphantides’ messages with the nurse, who texted him first to check on his well-being, included requests for photos of her and her family and questions about personal information, such as her age and if she was married. He brought up her divorce several times over the course of a few days and repeatedly asked to speak with her on the phone. In private Facebook messages with San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones, he made a sexually explicit comment about her partner.
The county attorneys also contended that Yphantides showed poor judgment in other instances not directly related to his firing, such as the time between his two leaves of absence when he repeatedly pressed San Diego Zoo officials to hold a news conference they did not want to have to discuss gorillas at the Safari Park becoming infected with COVID.
“It is undisputed that the Chief Medical Officer position requires good judgment, and Dr. Yphantides concedes that — on numerous instances — he failed to demonstrate good judgment,” the county attorneys wrote in their trial brief. They also argued there is “no contemporaneous medical evidence” to show they should have known about his mental condition at the time, citing a ruling in a previous case that state’s the Americans with Disabilities Act “does not require clairvoyance.”
Olsen told the jury that even though Yphantides repeatedly claimed at the time that he was “fine,” county leaders knew that he was not.
“Ample evidence … revealed that when Dr. Yphantides’ dormant bipolar disorder reappeared in late 2020 and into 2021, the County believed Dr. Yphantides displayed ‘poor judgment’ because he was experiencing ‘manic’ behavior and ‘depression’ — classic symptoms of bipolar disorder,” his attorneys wrote in a trial brief. “Indeed, documents produced by the County, and testimony from County executives, further demonstrated the County believed Dr. Yphantides’ mental disability caused him to engage in the specific conduct for which the County fired him. In sum, the County fired Dr. Yphantides because of disability-caused conduct.”
The trial in front of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is expected to last about eight days.
