La Prensa News Desk
A lawsuit seeking documents related to the firing of the CEO of the San Diego Unified Port District will now force the release of documents previously withheld from the public.
La Prensa San Diego Publisher Arturo Castañares requested documents related to the departure of Joe Stuyvesant, the Port’s CEO, after he was paid $370,000 and $40,000 in legal fees upon his resignation in January 2024.
Stuyvesant, who had lead the little-known government agency that manages the state-owned land along the region’s tidelands from Imperial Beach to the San Diego Airport since December 2020, was placed on administrative leave for six months before his departure for undisclosed reasons.
At the time of Stuyvesant’s resignation, the Port announced that it had incurred $370,000 in legal fees for an outside investigation, but claimed all documents related to the matter were protected by attorney-client privilege and not releasable to the public and no explanation was given for his departure.
Castañares then filed a lawsuit to pursue the release of the documents.
“The public deserved to know why $780,000 of taxpayer dollars were spent on dismissing the CEO of a public agency,” Castañares said at the time the lawsuit was filed. “A government agency cannot hire an outside lawyer to cover up its investigation in violation of the California Public Records Act,” Castañares added.
Last month, San Diego Superior Court Judge Joel Wohlfeil ruled that several documents included in the outside lawyer’s report to the Port Board of Commissioners must be released to the public, including the lawyer’s notes from her interview of Stuyvesant taken during the investigation.
Lawyers for the Port District argued that all of the documents attached to the lawyer’s report should be protected by attorney-client privilege even though some documents existed independently before the investigation and were not previously privileged.
San Diego Attorney Cory Briggs, who represented Castañares, countered that allowing a government agency to shield all documents related to an investigation, especially those that were not privileged before the report, simply by hiring an outside lawyer and claiming attorney-client privilege would allow it to cover up the reasons for the CEO’s dismissal.
Judge Wohlfiel ruled that the lawyer’s notes from the interview with Stuyvesant were not covered by attorney-client privilege but may be withheld as part of the attorney’s work product privilege if the notes included legal analysis or conclusions.
At the end of the court hearing, lawyers for the Port suggested they would file an appeal in an attempt to block the disclosure of the documents Judge Wohlfeil ordered to be released.
After Stuyvesant’s departure, the Port launched a search for his replacement.
The San Diego Unified Port District is managed by a seven-member Board of Commissioners appointed to four-year terms by the City Councils of the five Port cities; San Diego with three Commissioners, and Chula Vista, National City, Imperial Beach, and Coronado each appointing one Commissioner.
The Port’s Board selected Carlsbad City Manager Scott Chadwick as its next CEO. Chadwick previously served as the Chief Operating Officer of the City of San Diego.
The day after the court hearing, Castañares filed another lawsuit alleging the Port District had failed to respond to CPRA requests he had months earlier seeking information about outside contracts and services provided to the Port.
