The Washington state Department of Transportation is asking a judge to sanction a former employee and his lawyers to recoup the state’s legal fees in a wrongful-termination lawsuit.
Former WSDOT employee Scott Smith filed a lawsuit in March 2024 alleging that the state retaliated against him after he allegedly refused to “jimmy the numbers” in a state transportation forecast to omit fuel-price rises associated with the state’s carbon market.
Smith dropped the case in May after WSDOT’s lawyers pointed out a four-month gap in Smith’s text messages and Smith’s attorneys said they may withdraw their representation, according to the state’s request filed this month.
Smith’s attorneys, from the Citizen Action Defense Fund, stated in early May that Smith “had engaged in conduct that made it impossible for them to continue representing him without risking a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct,” the state alleges in its request. The firm later walked back that decision and continued to represent Smith, before he subsequently dropped the case.
WSDOT is asking a judge to sanction Smith and the Citizen Action Defense Fund to be reimbursed for taxpayer dollars used to defend the case. WSDOT says it incurred $327,183 in fees and costs.
Jackson Maynard, the executive director for the Citizen Action Defense Fund, said in an emailed statement the state “grossly mischaracterizes the events of our client’s voluntary dismissal,” and it would be filing a response on Friday.
Alternatively, the state has asked the judge to impose a sanction of at least $100,000, with 90% apportioned to Smith’s lawyers and 10% apportioned to Smith.
“Thousands of pages of discovery, hours of depositions and an independent investigation all have confirmed this was a baseless lawsuit,” a WSDOT statement reads. “Seeking sanctions is not common, but the facts of this case made it necessary to recoup the time and money spent defending the agency and its employees from the accusations. We look forward to the motion hearing to address these issues.”
Smith left WSDOT in November 2023.
An investigation released in May 2024 conducted by a law firm on behalf of the state found there was “not a preponderance of evidence” to support that Smith’s supervisors violated WSDOT’s policies or that any of the “retaliatory acts” that Smith had alleged actually occurred.
The state Climate Commitment Act created a carbon market that requires the state’s biggest polluting businesses to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or purchase pollution allowances to cover them. Over the course of seven three-year periods, state officials will reduce the number of allowances sold, ramping up pressure on the industries to lower their emissions.
“This is going to have a minimal impact, if any. Pennies. We are talking about pennies,” then-Gov. Jay Inslee said of the landmark climate law’s impact on prices at the pump.
The revenue that comes back to the state is earmarked for programs to reduce planet-warming emissions, like solar and heat pump installations, electric vehicle rebates and energy credits.
Smith had alleged he was pressured by a supervisor to not include his per-gallon cost impact estimates of the state’s cap-and-trade program in a March 2023 report. Smith estimated that the program cost roughly 40-50 cents per gallon.
When he refused to do so, he alleged, the state pushed him out.
The state is requesting sanctions because documents “unequivocally disprove most of Smith’s central allegations of retaliation,” and thus the lawsuit “constitutes a ‘baseless filing,’ as it is not ‘well-grounded in fact,’” the state alleged in its request. And, the state’s request states, Smith and his counsel failed to timely preserve electronically stored information on his personal cellphone.
A hearing is set for Aug. 22 in Thurston County Superior Court.
Material from The Seattle Times archives was included in this reporting.
