City of Fort Worth spending millions to resolve pair of whistleblower lawsuits

The city of Fort Worth is spending millions of dollars to address two whistleblower lawsuits.

This month the city council approved spending up to $2 million to fight one lawsuit filed by a former police chief – and to pay $850,000 to settle a case from another former employee.

Some city leaders are now sharing concerns with NBC 5 about the cost of these cases.

In their meeting on April 9, the Fort Worth city council approved spending an additional $1.95 million on a pair of whistleblower lawsuits.

One action: $850,000 to settle a suit from former city crime lab scientist Trisa Crutcher.

Crutcher claimed she was fired after reporting multiple violations of state and federal law, including the crime lab failing to correctly process DNA evidence and sexual assault cases in accordance with state deadlines.

The city’s other decision was to pay an additional $1.1 million in legal fees to fight a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by former police chief Joel Fitzgerald.

“I didn’t support it,” said Chris Nettles, Fort Worth city council member for District 8. “I think we as a city have other things that we could be doing as relates to our tax dollars than fighting a lawsuit that could be settled.”

Fitzgerald’s lawsuit claims in 2019 he reported to the FBI that the city wasn’t properly restricting access to the FBI’s online crime data system and that he’d learned city officials were illegally destroying documents that should have been maintained under public records laws.

The city later fired Fitzgerald for cause, but a review by the Texas Workforce Commission found that Fitzgerald wasn’t guilty of any workplace misconduct.

City councilman Chris Nettles said he believed the city should settle instead of fighting the lawsuit, on which they’ve now spent a total of $2 million in legal fees.

“The worst-case scenario is that we lose this case and there’s more money that has to go out of our tax dollars,” Nettles said.

Fitzgerald’s attorney declined to speak in detail about the case, saying they’re preparing for trial in October.

Some city leaders said they believed these whistleblower cases showed a need for change.

“To see these lawsuits and to see them have merit, shows that we as a city have to spend more time in training those who are in charge,” Nettles said. “And until we get there, the city of Fort Worth is in trouble.”

NBC 5 reached out to the city of Fort Worth for a response to the claims in Fitzgerald’s lawsuit, and concerns about workplace culture in the wake of both whistleblower suits.

“The city looks forward to defending itself vigorously against the allegations in this lawsuit, and having this claim also be resolved in the City’s favor,” a spokesperson for the city of Fort Worth responded in a statement. “The parties did go to mediation but were unable to reach agreement.”

“The City offered a reasonable amount in mediation, despite the strength of the City’s case, and the Plaintiff decided he would rather continue on with the litigation,” a city spokesperson continued. “For every lawsuit, the City weighs the litigation cost and possible losses at trial against the amount requested for settlement when making a decision about settlement.”

“The City takes its stewardship of taxpayer resources very seriously and carefully considers all angles in deciding its litigation strategy,” the statement concluded.