Santa Rosa Junior College faces a $15 million lawsuit from a former nursing program faculty member alleging charges of defamation and sexual discrimination.

SRJC hired the plaintiff, Dr. Daniel Doolan, as an adjunct faculty member for the Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) Program in 2001. In 2009 he became a full-time, tenure-track SRJC faculty member for the ADN program.

Doolan first filed a lawsuit against SRJC in 2012 citing the manipulation of his tenure process. It alleged that in the second year of Doolan’s tenure review, disagreements arose over the committee’s evaluations of Doolan’s professional abilities and character.

He won $308,000 with a verdict that false allegations were used to justify the termination of his tenure contract.

The first lawsuit, filed Sep. 7, 2012, covers any alleged misconduct up to that date. “But Dr. Doolan continued to experience what we allege was further unlawful conduct thereafter,” said Doolan’s lawyer, Dustin Collier. “Thus, the subsequent suit involves alleged unlawful conduct by the district after that date.”

Rather than waiting to include the later events in the first lawsuit, Doolan and his attorney decided to file a second one to avoid a trial continuance and undesirable delays, Collier said.

The second lawsuit, currently pending, provides new evidence alleging that Doolan was denied tenure for his complaints about patient safety issues, legal compliance and discrimination in the nursing program.

After the first trial, Doolan reapplied for his position at SRJC and was immediately denied consideration as a candidate for the job. The refusal to consider him for re-hire is included in the second lawsuit.

Doolan is now suing the Board of Trustees and the individual members of his tenure review committee for $15 million.  However, the $15 million is set as a “theoretical cap,” the alleged worth of the case, which would be an extreme result.

“We believe Dr. Doolan’s actual damages at present are more like $2 to $3 million, based in part on an economist’s valuation of the harm to plaintiff’s career and in part on results in other cases we find to be similar,” Collier said.

The $15 million cap leaves room for the judge or jury to award more than anticipated as it did in Doolan’s first lawsuit.

If SRJC is found guilty, “the damages would be assessed against any or all of them and the plaintiff can collect as much of the judgment from each defendant as he wants,” Collier said.

“If the defendants choose, they can sue one another for ‘contribution’ and ‘indemnity’ in a separate lawsuit, which means the court would determine how much each defendant contributed to the unlawful conduct and how the damages should be divvied up as a result,” he said.

This current suit alleges that in the 13 years Doolan was employed, he was singled out for his gender as the only male nurse in the SRJC nursing department.

Doolan felt sexual discrimination in the workplace for a variety of reasons. He said some reasons trace back to the nursing field’s long history of discriminating against men, Collier said.

“When the Santa Rosa Junior College [nursing program] was founded, it did not accept male applicants for admission and didn’t employ male faculty,” Collier said. “Dr. Doolan, in my understanding, was the first male faculty they ever hired as a full-time, tenure-track professor in the nursing program.”

The lawsuit alleges that colleagues wrongfully portrayed Doolan as violent, aggressive and predatory and told him he needed to “speak more like a woman.” It also alleges that oral and written comments against Doolan spread amongst faculty members with the intention to defame him, and his tenure review committee questioned Doolan’s competency in the classroom despite positive in-class evaluations.

The lawsuit alleges that Doolan was punished for his students’ medication errors and put on administrative leave without an explanation. The suit states that Doolan was demoted for mistakes, while others were not punished for similar mistakes.

“Every single female faculty member has also had students with medication errors, and none of them have ever been disciplined and several of them have been promoted,” Collier said.

According to Collier, the alleged gender discrimination Doolan experienced at SRJC is not limited to the nursing department. He said that after the case received press coverage, approximately a dozen other employees in various departments approached him.

“We spoke to women who have been accused of the opposite of Dr. Doolan, of not being firm enough, so there’s a lot of stereotyping going on — a lot of preferential treatment along traditional gender lines,” Collier said. “There’s a lot of retaliation against anybody who complains.”

All defendants contacted refused to comment on the case.

Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Mary Kay Rudolph said it would be inappropriate to comment because she needs to respect everyone’s confidentiality, as it is a personnel issue.

ADN Director and SRJC nursing defendant Anna Valdez did not comment because the case is still in litigation.

Gene Elliot, the lawyer representing SRJC, also declined to comment on the case.

The next court date is set for Oct. 8.