A D.C. firefighter sued the district after she said she was made a scapegoat for the slow response to a Mount Pleasant apartment building fire in 2008.
Vanessa Coleman, a former captain in the D.C. fire department, said she wrote several email to the fire chief, saying her supervisor, Battalion Fire Chief John Lee, stopped her from checking the basement of the building, where the fire started.
A later investigation revealed “failure to check the basement first had been fatal to the department’s efforts to control the fire, which had in fact begun in the basement."
Coleman was fired after refusing to take a psychological evaluation, ordered by Denis Rubin, the fire chief whom she emailed. The department fired her in October 2009.
Coleman, who was a firefighter for 18 years, sued for $2.5 million for wrongful termination. Her attorney said she should be protected as a whistleblower for her statement about what happened the night of the fire.
Attorneys for the government argued Coleman did not disclose any new information in those emails.
“She had to start over, start a new career, lost half her income, lost her home,” said Karen Gray, general counsel for the Government Accountability Project. “This has devastated her.”
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Attorneys for the fire department would not comment, the jury could decide the case as early as Tuesday.
