La Brea MP Nicole Olivierre has been ordered to pay the National Gas Company (NGC)’s legal costs after she withdrew a lawsuit seeking documents relating to the company’s employment practices.
Olivierre, the parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries, decided to withdraw the appeal after some of the documents she requested were provided by her former employer through a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), earlier this year.
While Appellate Judges Allan Mendonca and Peter Rajkumar granted Olivierre leave to withdraw her claim, they ordered her to pay the legal costs as they ruled that she could have obtained the documents if she had made the application under the FOIA instead of filing the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, Olivierre, a former assistant manager enterprise risk management at NGC, made two complaints to the Equal Opportunity Commission over allegedly racial discrimination in promotions within the company in 2012.
She claimed that she was victimised by NGC after making the first complaint and was forced to file a second. Olivierre was eventually retrenched and claimed that the decision was based on her complaints as no one from her department besides her, was sent home. She has since filed a wrongful dismissal claim against the company.
After the Equal Opportunity Tribunal (EOT) ruled on her complaints in 2013, Olivierre filed a separate lawsuit seeking the documents.
Olivierre now has to decide if she wants to make a fresh complaint to the commission considering the evidence she received from the FOIA request.
Questions were raised over Olivierre’s appointment as Energy Minister in 2015 in the face of her legal history with the NGC, a company which then fell under her portfolio.
A little over a year later, Olivierre being replaced by Franklin Khan and given her current portfolio.
Olivierre was represented by Michael Bullock, while NGC was represented by Kerwyn Garcia.