San Francisco will pay $750,000 to settle a bizarre lawsuit brought by a former employee at the city medical examiner’s office who claimed she was fired for raising concerns that her boss may have tossed out a human skull.
City supervisors unanimously approved the payout Tuesday, resolving a complaint filed by former autopsy technician Sonia Kominek-Adachi, who alleged she faced retaliation after reporting the disappearance of the skull during an internal inventory, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Kominek-Adachi said she found out about the missing skull in 2023 while cataloging body parts maintained by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner — where the remains were required to be kept until the identity of the deceased could be confirmed, the Chronicle reported.
Her lawsuit alleged that the office’s executive director David Serrano Sewell may have “inexplicably” discarded the skull while rushing to tidy the workspace ahead of an inspection, according to the San Francisco Standard.
Records cited by the Standard show the skull belonged to an unidentified man whose body was found near a homeless encampment at Lake Merced in 2014. The skull had been encased in a clay facial reconstruction that could have aided in identifying the remains, the lawsuit stated.
“The skull was a critical element” in identifying the man, the complaint said, per the Standard.
Kominek-Adachi alleged that after she raised concerns about the missing remains, her boss failed to investigate and instead sought to push her out of the office.
She claimed she was subjected to a polygraph request, background scrutiny and professional retaliation that ultimately resulted in her termination from a temporary at-will role in 2023, noted the Standard.
City officials disputed the claim that the skull was discarded.
A spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office said the remains never left the medical examiner’s office but acknowledged the settlement was appropriate given the cost and risk of prolonged litigation, according to the Chronicle.
Kominek-Adachi also alleged that Sewell discriminated against women in the workplace, passed over female staff for promotion and made demeaning remarks, the Chronicle reported.
Her attorney, James Urbanic, said she was relieved to resolve the dispute and move forward after the ordeal. But in a previous statement to the Standard, he Urbanic that “her termination is a terrible black mark on her ability to continue to work in her field.”
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