MALIBU—The Los Angeles Superior Court awarded a $1.8 million settlement to a former Passages Malibu employee, who filed a lawsuit against the company for wrongfully terminating her employment after 3 months in 2015. Passages Malibu, an addiction treatment facility located in Malibu was sued by Cynthia Begazo. The jury made a verdict in the lawsuit in Begazo’s favor, where she is expected to be awarded $1,829,160.
The Malibu Times reported, Begazo indicated in her complaint that she found a deceased male patient, under unusual circumstances, in a room in her second month in the job. Her supervisors did not report the death to the police. Upon reviewing the employees’ files, she found that a nurse on duty that day was insufficiently trained. CEO of Passages, Pax Prentiss, told the jury that Begazo did not follow his orders to meet the managers from other Passages centers and she did not put in extra time required for to get the department functioning effectively and did not help with the recruiting.
“Begazo said she refused to change the files because that would be illegal and that the files were going to remain as they were on the date of the incident,” said Shegerian & Associates in a statement. Begazo claimed her supervisor stopped talking to her, excluded her from employee-related meetings, and sent other employees to continue projects she was working on.
The release further stated that during the trial, Marina Mahoney, COO of Passages Malibu, asked another employee to ‘fix’ the employee files.
In a letter to Malibu Times claimed to be written by Mahoney, the writer said, “I am a good, honest and ethical person and these people have created a monster out of me.”
Canyon News reached out to representatives from Passages Malibu regarding the lawsuit, and are awaiting a comment.
