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Case Profile
Braun's Discrimination Settlement Largest Awarded to UC Woman
Odelia Braun, M. D.
Winifred von Ehrenberg, Ph. D.
November 1995 -- A special assistant to Chancellor Joseph Martin strides into Dr. Odelia Braun's office at the Center for Prehospital Research and Training (CPRT), tells her she is dismissed and her organization eliminated. Dr. Braun has ten minutes to remove her personal belongings. Why?
The official line: Insufficient funds to maintain the CPRT. But the organization founded by Dr. Braun is largely self-supporting. The reality: an auditor's report issued the next day charging UCSF with misappropriation of public funds. The scapegoat? CPRT Director Odelia Braun, M.D.
April 1997 After four months of testimony, a jury unanimously confirms Dr. Braun's claims of gender discrimination, defamation, sexual harassment, retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Her award, $2.4 million in damages _ $1.5 million from UC and $900,000 from the City of San Francisco is the largest settlement for gender discrimination in the history of the University of California.
Bright Beginnings
Board-certified in both internal and emergency medicine, Dr. Braun was hired as an attending physician and faculty member of the Emergency Department in 1985. Like most new employees, she assumed that her career would be governed by University of California policies and that the Division Chief who hired her, and assigned salary, benefits and appointment titles, would abide by these rules.
During her first years in the ER, Braun observed that most cardiac arrest victims did not survive. With cardiac arrest the number one cause of death in the Bay Area, she began to research the effectiveness of the emergency medical services (EMS) delivered to cardiac arrest victims by paramedics and firefighters.
Based on her findings, Braun developed a plan to improve EMS and cardiac arrest survival that the City of San Francisco adopted. Supported by the City, SF County Public Health and UC, she established the CPRT and began training urban EMS personnel.
By 1992, she had developed model EMS training programs and the country's first automatic defibrillation program for the SF Fire Department (SFFD). She created large-scale public education programs, like Save-A-Life Saturday and CPR in the Schools, and developed the first internal emergency response plan for a public arena - The SF Giants' Candlestick Park Plan.
Braun's Programs Save Lives
The SFFD automatic defibrillation program doubled cardiac arrest survival rates, the public education programs tripled the rate of "bystander" CPR, and the SF Giants emergency plan yielded the first "save" in stadium history _ resuscitation of a baseball fan who suffered a heart attack during a game. The medical device industry sought Braun's research on the ventricular fibrillation waveform to improve defibrillator design. Multiple awards from the City of San Francisco, UC, and the State of California acknowledged the magnitude of Braun's contributions.
Division Chief Takes Credit
Although Braun had designed the studies, obtained the funding and conducted the research, the Division Chief took first authorship on her first four manuscripts. She requested a written contract assuring her first authorship on the next paper. He signed, then reneged. When confronted, he dismissed her concerns, walked straight to the Chairman's office and complained that Dr. Braun lacked academic integrity, mismanaged the CPRT, and would ultimately harm UC's reputation.
Over the next two years, he claimed her work and her ideas were his own. He acquired her research database under false pretenses, usurped authorship on additional papers, and initiated four audits and two whistle-blower complaints
against the CPRT. He threatened her staff, and poisoned her relationships with UC, the City, the SFFD, and the EMS community in an effort to destroy her reputation and her organization.
"Good Ol' Boy" Approach Fails
Braun approached the Chairman, then the Associate Dean, to intervene. When her Chief's attacks intensified, she turned to UC legal counsel who invoked the traditional "good ol' boy" approach. At a private, undocumented meeting, they warned the Chief to end his harassment. They told Braun she could return to her work without fear of further problems, but warned her not to discuss her experience with anyone outside UC, i.e., "the University takes care of its own."
At no time did they inform her of her rights or about formal procedures to redress harassment. Nor did they launch an investigation as required by law.
The good ol' boy approach failed. For another two years, Braun battled further malignant accusations from her Chief. Then, without warning, she was fired.
Virtual Reality
The UC Grievance Process
Braun fought back using UC's internal grievance process. As an employer, UC is required by law to have procedures to investigate employee complaints and protect individual academic rights. Braun did not know that UC's procedures are "virtual." While they appear to protect employee rights, in practice they benefit only the University.
In Braun's case, UC ignored her academic rights, limited witness testimony, and stacked hearing committees. At one hearing, UC Office of the General Counsel (OGC) attorneys opposed her one lawyer presented the case against her while a second coached the hearing committee on policy. They excluded all evidence of discrimination and inappropriate termination. Committee members included people who owed UC favors, including visiting foreign faculty and a UC physician and faculty member under investigation for the death of a patient.
Academic Rights Stripped
In grotesquely twisted logic, they ruled that Braun's academic status did not protect her from being fired for any reason except job
performance. Since she had an excellent work record, they claimed that performance was not the reason she was dismissed and upheld the termination.
Chief Cleared
The committee also cleared the Chief of misconduct, claiming that he did not act unethically when he excluded her from authorship of her own papers because he did not make the decision himself, he asked a medical student seeking a letter of recommendation to decide; and, that he did not defame her when he told a colleague that Braun had embezzled $600,000 from UC because he made the accusation in the privacy of his office.
The committee also found a lack of evidence to support Dr. Braun's claim that the Chief maligned her and interfered with her role as SFFD Medical Director, but they did not interview all of the witnesses. A San Francisco Superior Court jury subsequently heard the witnesses and found unanimously in Braun's favor.
"Mediation"
Braun again fought back, requesting an evaluation of her case by an outside mediator. Three mediators reviewed her case over a period of three years. UCSF withdrew those who did not conform to UC's position. When the facts recorded on tape supported Braun's position, the tape "mysteriously" disappeared. Administrative remedies exhausted, she filed her lawsuit.
Costly Human Rights Abuses
UC's inability to stop its human rights abuses resulted in enormous cost to Braun, to California taxpayers, and to the City in lives lost.
Braun estimates UC spent $1.5 million fighting her; the settlement totaled $2.4 million.
UC's response to a simple request to halt harassment cost taxpayers $4 million. If invested in Dr. Braun's programs, that same $4 million could have saved many lives.
-wage@wage.org-