S.L. County not liable in sex suit, lawyers say

Salt Lake County has parted ways with former chief deputy clerk Nick Floros in a lawsuit regarding alleged sexual harassment in the clerk's office.

In answer to a lawsuit brought by former clerk's office employee Marcia Rice, county attorneys last week denied culpability and said that even if the county should be held liable for Floros' alleged behavior, he should be the one to pay for it.

Should the allegations prove to be true, Floros "maliciously breached his duty" and "perpetrated a fraud" against the county, making him the one liable, county litigation chief John Soltis wrote in legal papers filed in U.S. District Court.

The development is significant, given that Floros' accuser and others of his alleged victims within the county have accused county officials of closing ranks behind him, protecting one of their own. (Floros was a 30-year veteran of county government.)

County Councilman Joe Hatch seized on that fact, saying councilmen Steve Harmsen and Russell Skousen — who have been suspicious of other county officials, particularly District Attorney David Yocom, with regard to the matter — have been "leading (the media) down the path" and shouldn't even be talking to the media at all about it.

The Floros situation has blossomed to some extent into a Republican-versus-Democrat situation, with many Republicans saying prominent Democrats swept the matter under the rug, while Democrats say Republicans are trying to blow it up for partisan gain.

While the district attorney formulates a strategy, at bottom the county mayor controls litigation with outside parties. There was a proposal made within the county to go after Floros before Rice brought suit in October, but Mayor Nancy Workman declined to pursue it for technical reasons, chief administrative officer David Marshall said. Nevertheless, once the lawsuit was filed, Marshall said, "Now we have litigation to deal with," and a claim against Floros was appropriate.

Floros' attorney, Phil Dyer, declined comment.

The Deseret Morning News has been seeking the report of an investigation into the Floros matter, which the county has so far declined to provide. However, related documents obtained by the newspaper show that the county paid two outside attorneys $10,800 to conduct the investigation.

The attorneys concluded that "more likely than not, (Floros) engaged in unwelcome sexual conduct and advances toward you and that he punished you for not reciprocating to his advances," Soltis wrote to Rice last February.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also found "reasonable cause" to support Rice's case.

In a letter to the commission last May, however, deputy district attorney Valerie Wilde maintained that Rice was never harmed in her employment status. Wilde also wrote that the investigation found that Floros had engaged in "harsh management tactics" against a surveyor's employee in 1987 but that county officials were not aware of it because the employee "complained using her employee association group to resolve her issues rather than the county's formal complaint process."

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E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com