San Diego is paying out $450,000 to settle an age discrimination lawsuit filed by a former deputy fire chief and a claim that faulty asphalt at Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in Kearny Mesa damaged a plane.
Former Deputy Chief Kelly Zombro is getting $190,000 to settle his claims that he was forced to resign from the city’s Fire-Rescue Department in 2023 because of his age.
Zombro was hired at age 52 after a long career with the California Department of Forestry, where his lawsuit says he accumulated expertise in fighting and preventing wildfires that San Diego’s department lacked.
Zombro says the department’s top brass degraded him and told him he wasn’t meeting expectations but declined to explain those expectations.
He also says the city retaliated against him for using family medical leave when his father died.
While Zombro eventually resigned, his suit says his departure was essentially a firing because his vehicle had been taken away, and he was told either to quit or be fired.
In court documents, the city maintains the way Zombro was treated was “a just and proper exercise of management discretion, undertaken for a fair and honest reason without malice or unlawful motive.”
It also says its treatment of him was not retaliatory, discriminatory or unlawful.
The settlement was reached before a jury trial was scheduled to begin last Friday.
In a separate case, QBE Insurance Corp. is getting $265,000 to settle a legal claim it filed saying a weakened section of asphalt on the taxiway of Montgomery-Gibbs damaged an airplane in April 2022.
QBE had to pay for repairs to the plane because the owner of the plane had insured it with QBE.
The City Council approved both payouts in open session Tuesday. Both payouts had previously been approved in a closed session Dec. 16.
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