| Printed Page 1930, Feb. 10 | Printed Page 1950, Feb. 10 |

If we're going to talk in terms of ex parte administrative matters, I understand that the rules would apply to an administrative judge as they would to any circuit judge.
Q. Have you ever been held in contempt or sanctioned by a court?
A. No, I have not.
Q. I want to ask you one other thing, what criteria did you use to select those five cases you've listed as your most significant that you were personally involved in?
A. Well, there was some difficulty on my part trying to be as honest as I could and recalling names of persons and parties and putting that information to paper, so what I did was simply recall cases that I could remember and identity parties.

It was difficult to recount or recall cases that might have been the most significant to me in terms of knowing individual names, so their significance is articulated on that sheet to the extent that it is, but may not necessarily reflect the cases that I have the most passion for or I thought were the most significant --
Q. Just --
A. -- I guess, and the short of it, is that list reflects cases that I can remember and not necessarily the cases that I have passions for.
Q. Which ones would be the ones you have passions for?
A. The ones whose names I cannot remember exactly.
Q. I mean, what would be the subject matter?
A. They were the types of cases having to deal one with disadvantaged persons that I was able to litigate cases and prevail. One case is in there, the Willie Durant case, is a case involving a lady who -- her stepfather adopted her at the age of five or six and then at the age of 14 he decided to have sex with her, to which she gave birth to a child he denied. It took me some two years to prosecute that case, but I finally got him and he's doing 18 years in jail, cases of that kind.
Q. Are there any of those kind of cases -- that might come before you as an ALJ that you would have some sort of preconceived notion of what the outcome ought to be?
A. No. No. I wouldn't have any preconceived notions as to the outcome until I heard the facts.
Q. Have you been the subject of any disciplinary action in the course of your public employment?
A. No, sir, I have not.

I was also even more concerned about some of his responses to your questions. Frankly, they were too pat such as when he said that he tried to avoid appearance of impropriety for 42 years --
Q. Let's stick to the complaint.
A. Okay.
Q. And if you have a specific complaint against him in that regard, we'll get to that --
A. Yes.
Q. -- in the discussion of the complaint --

And what has happened is that after I had properly and in a timely manner filed my complaints, cooperated in every way, presented every document, the employer's own professional review committee decided that the complaints or the charges that were given for my termination were indeed pretexture and unfounded.

And at that time, the University's own counsel to my understanding told the Commission, okay, the University acknowledges that they have -- we have wronged Doctor Faltas. Let's see if we can resolve this. It was very wise because my specialty is in Preventive Medicine. If you just treat the symptom, but do not treat the underlying disease, the symptom will recur. It's not treatment if you just treat the symptom, so what was asked and that was reasonable -- in fact, that is the entire idea behind Title 7 and behind the South Carolina Human Affairs Law is that whoever is guilty of violation of Title 7 or the Human Affairs Law, in my case it was religious harassment, should be disciplined for it, otherwise they would be free to do it again. So --
Q. Please try to stick to how this reflects to whether Mr. Whittleton is qualified or not qualified to be an administrative law judge?
A. He's not qualified at all for two reasons. His own writing and that was one of the attachments that I gave you. He says consequently any -- before that, and that's the letter that is written on November 3rd, 1993 to my attorney, Mr. James Merritt.

This article significantly impacts our ability to gather information. Frankly, this is nothing short of bull shit. The Human Affairs Commission has subpoena power and they are an investigative agency and if they were going to rely on the wrongdoer employer volunteering information against interests, they are never going to protect the right of the employee.

So his reasoning was that because the people who were found having done wrong, having violated both Title 7 and the Human Affairs Law were not going to volunteer further information against interests, then the Commission could no longer -- could no longer do its job.

That is specifically why the General Assembly of South Carolina had given them subpoena power which is particularly broader over State agencies such as the University of South Carolina.

The other -- the other sentence that followed it says -- it says consequently, any factual determination by the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission in this matter will be subject to attack. Well, what else is new? Whenever a judge sits between two opposing parties it is to be expected that if he was for Party A, Party B is going to not like it. If he was for Party B, Party A is not going to like it, so a judge who even entertains, entertains, let it cross his mind, the fact that his ruling or his

Well, justice delayed is justice denied. Even if the Federal EEOC were to make findings exactly as the Human Affairs Commission had essentially made, which is
-- there was indeed likelihood that I was discriminated against because I'm Christian, if -- even that would come one year later, then when it would have been made by the Human Affairs Commission, so in that sense, I was very wronged.

The most -- even shocking thing is that -- and I -- and I wrote this in my letter to Commissioner Ham is if someone sees that when there is recommendation to discipline them for having violated the South Carolina Human Affairs law and they go to the Human Affairs Commission and see -- and make a scene and see that based on that, the Human Affairs Commission washes its hands of it, what kind of a precedent does that set?

Why doesn't anyone else who is accused of any wrongdoing by the police go and make a scene with the police and then the police say, okay, we'll not investigate that. This is shocking. And as legislators, I think -- I urge you to look at what this South Carolina Human Affairs Commission in its entirety has been doing with the two million annual budget.
THE CHAIRMAN: Now that's not our job here today. Our job is to talk about the qualifications of Mr. Whittleton and we --
A. Of course, but --
THE CHAIRMAN: I think we need to --
A. But you can't -- but you can't separate your other existence.
THE CHAIRMAN: Well, our other existence resumes on Tuesday. Today, we're focusing on Judicial candidates.
A. Yes.
THE CHAIRMAN: I appreciate your testimony on that.

He claims that he could no longer proceed because the newspaper distorted it. Well, he could have called the newspapers with a correction, but there is -- I've given you the newspapers and you have the letter before you. The newspaper report is almost verbatim from the letter.
THE CHAIRMAN: All right. Thank you. And we have -- we do have your affidavit which encloses all those materials. I was examining those a moment ago. I think we have all that in the record.
A. I'd just like to -- to add that this wasn't without any impact on my career. After -- before he dumped my case, the University was offering to reinstate me although they were trying to attach unacceptable conditions to the reinstatement when he bowed out of it, they terminated me again for no reason.

So this shows you what happens when an enforcement agency just bows out.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Doctor.
A. Thank you. May I either ask if whether you will hear his response to that because I may have a rebuttal or what --
THE CHAIRMAN: No, ma'am. We're not going to have any rebuttal. You know, we -- our rules are that we allow the party who was applying to respond and we keep our record open in the event their witness wants to give us more information. We will do that, but the problem is that he would be able to rebut you and we'd be here all day hearing those responses.

But you may respond in writing to anything that is not in our record that comes up when he testifies, if you care to do that, but we're not going to take any more oral testimony after his response. But we do leave the record open if you want to forward some written material.
A. When will you hear his response, so I know if I can sit listen to it?
THE CHAIRMAN: Well, we plan on hearing it right now.
A. You're not going to take your long planned break yet?
THE CHAIRMAN: Well, I think that now that we're this far into it, I think we'll go ahead and stay and hear Mr. Whittleton. I think his response is going to be brief, I hope.
MR. WHITTLETON: I have an affidavit that I'd like to submit to the members.

I, John H. Whittleton, state the following: Presently I'm employed as a Division Director with the State Human Affairs Commission. In that capacity, my duties include supervision of six investigators regarding discrimination and employment complaints.

I have first met Doctor Marie Faltas after she filed a charge with the Commission which after was later assigned to my division and Ann Coggiola was the investigator, I assigned -- who I assigned to the case. Ann came to me sometime later and said Doctor Faltas was being very difficult during that investigation and she wanted me to become involved with the investigation.

Sometime thereafter, Doctor Faltas came into the office to meet with Ann and me. At first, Doctor Faltas was very nice and cooperative, but as the meeting continued, she became more -- much more difficult. Finally, it was agreed that she was to submit to us a list of demands she wanted in order to settle her complaint and we would in turn contact USC.

I don't remember exactly how Ann came to have Doctor Faltas' demands, but I told Ann to prepare a letter containing those things Faltas was asking for and sent it to USC. Ann prepared the letter, came to my office and read me the letter and I said, fine, send it.

I believe the next day, Ann came back and said Doctor Faltas is being difficult again and she is demanding a copy of the letter. I sent the letter to USC. I said to her, fine, go ahead and send the letter.

| Printed Page 1930, Feb. 10 | Printed Page 1950, Feb. 10 |