Captain’s Drawer Notes About Firefighter Are “For Personnel Purposes .”

The FireFighters Bill of Rights [FFBOR] found in Government Code section 3255 provides: “A firefighter shall not have any comment adverse to his or her interest entered in his or her personnel file, or any other file used for any personnel purposes by his or her employer, without the firefighter having first read and signed the instrument containing the adverse comment indicating he or she is aware of the comment.” In this case the captain kept notes he called “daily logs” on each firefighter, including appellant, who had been a fire fighter since 1984, but only supervised by the captain for two years. At the time of the annual review, the captain took information from his daily logs and entered it onto the firefighter’s review, at which point the firefighter would see it for the first time.  The firefighter contended this process violated his rights under the FFBOR.  The appellate court agreed, stating: “Likely many supervisors keep some sort of notes to prepare accurate annual employee reviews, but most supervisors are not operating under a statutory scheme similar to the one we have here, which requires that no adverse comment be entered in to any file used for personnel purposes ‘without the firefighter having first read and signed the instrument.’ . . . Because the daily logs on firefighters are used for personnel purposes, we conclude they are subject to provisions of FFBOR.”  (Poole v. Orange County Fire Authority (Cal. App. Fourth Dist., Div. 3; November 4, 2013) 221 Cal.App.4th 155.)