Three years ago, as San Diego was in the thick of defending a wrongful-termination lawsuit brought by a former assistant city attorney, another lawyer working for the city says he was asked to lie under oath to help fend off the legal complaint.
Mark Skeels, who by then had worked at the City Attorney’s Office for 11 years, was uncomfortable with what he said he was being asked to do by one of the outside lawyers representing the city in the case filed by his one-time coworker Marlea Dell’Anno.
So Skeels filed a sworn declaration in her case alerting the court to what he felt was improper behavior by city lawyers.
Skeels, then a senior chief deputy to City Attorney Mara Elliott, was quickly placed on administrative leave. He was fired soon thereafter.
Dell’Anno and her lawyers went on to collect nearly $6 million from the city as a result of her wrongful-termination claim. Now Skeels is set to resolve his own retaliation lawsuit with the city of San Diego with a $542,500 payment from taxpayers.
The City Council is being asked to approve the payout at its meeting Tuesday.
Elliott, who made the decision to terminate Skeels, denied his allegations and said the settlement was a business decision. “Proceeding to trial would have cost more than the settlement amount,” she said in an email Thursday. “Mr. Skeels’ actions left no alternative other than his termination.”
The city relied on outside legal counsel to defend the case, Elliott added.
San Diego attorney Joshua Gruenberg, who initially represented Dell’Anno in her lawsuit and subsequently was retained by Skeels, said his second client is satisfied with the outcome of his case.
Skeels has been working in the private sector since he left city government, Gruenberg said.
“He is excited for his future as a litigator in San Diego and is pleased to put the matter behind him,” the plaintiff’s attorney said by email on Thursday.
Skeels was roped into the Dell’Anno case in 2021. It was then, he said in an affidavit he signed under oath, that a lawyer working for the city’s outside law firm defending that case threatened him with personal and professional harm if he did not agree to testify in the city’s favor.
Attorney William Price, then of Burke Williams & Sorensen, had first sought a meeting with Skeels in April 2021 because he was a potential witness in the Dell’Anno case.
During the subsequent discussion, Price told Skeels that he had “a lot of friends in the legal community” and “could have a lot of influence over any future campaign,” Skeels said.
Skeels, who had previously run unsuccessfully for the Superior Court bench, said in his later court filing that he thought Price was attempting to affect his potential testimony in the Dell’Anno matter.
“I took this point to mean that I should do what he wanted — or else face potential backlash in the legal community which would tarnish any opportunity to see judicial office,” Skeels wrote under the penalty of perjury.
The Skeels declaration was attached to the Dell’Anno court file as an exhibit. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported the development in June of that year.
Dell’Anno‘s case went to trial almost seven years after she was fired, and the former city prosecutor was awarded $3.9 million by a San Diego County jury in March 2022.
Elliott vowed to appeal the judgment — and related costs continued to accrue interest.
Skeels sued later in 2022.
By the end of 2022, the city agreed to pay $5.9 million to resolve the Dell’Anno litigation case and related attorney fees and legal costs, but the Skeels litigation continued.
Price, who has not discussed the Skeels allegations publicly, left the Burke Williams & Sorensen law firm and now runs his own law practice near Carmel Valley, according to California State Bar records.
Elliott sued Price and his former law firm two years ago, alleging they mishandled the Dell’Anno case.
That lawsuit alleging professional negligence was quietly dismissed at San Diego’s request late last spring, court records show.
