A whistleblower lawsuit won by the City of Vero Beach on summary judgment is now on the docket of the Fourth District Court of Appeals, with police Lt. Daniel Cook waiting to hear the fate of his civil case against his 37-year employer.

The appeal is now expected to be taken up by a three-judge appellate panel in West Palm Beach. At least two of those three judges would need to agree to overturn the circuit court ruling and allow Cook’s lawsuit to proceed to trial, or to affirm the order dismissing the case.

Cook alleged the Vero Beach Police Department’s top leadership created a hostile work environment and that he was disciplined in retribution for bringing problems to the attention of the Vero Beach City Council and City Manager Monte Falls, going above and around his immediate supervisor, Deputy Chief Matthew Monaco, and department head Police Chief David Currey.

Cook and his attorney want the case to go before a jury of local citizens, a right they argue was denied Cook by the order granting the City of Vero Beach a summary judgment.

More than four dozen people were expected to testify at a trial that was scheduled for this month, including top city officials and decorated police officers, but the City of Vero Beach argued Circuit Court Judge Cynthia Cox should end the proceedings with a summary judgment rather than allowing a jury to weigh all the evidence and testimony. The city maintains that Cook’s claims are unfounded and that no such hostile work environment existed. Cox ruled on June 3 for the city, dismissing Cook’s case with prejudice, meaning Cook could not amend or re-file the suit.

Cook’s attorney Jessica Travis petitioned Cox on June 18 for a re-hearing with a 65-page pleading.

“This motion is not a vehicle to reargue every issue decided in the Order. It is directed to three categories of analytical error: failure to address an independent legal theory of protected disclosure that Plaintiff squarely raised and the record supports; reliance on a decision-maker’s self-serving denial of knowledge that is contradicted by that witness’s own deposition admissions and circumstantial evidence; and findings discounting pretext evidence which goes to causation and rebuts the City’s explanation for the discipline,” the request for rehearing states.

“The Order fails to conduct a substantive analysis as to whether Cook should be afforded Whistle Blower protection because his text message and email reported a pattern of conduct that meets the statutory definition of gross mismanagement, malfeasance, or misfeasance,” Travis wrote in her pleading. “Because the nature of the information reported meets the statutory and case law definitions, the text messages were protected disclosures,”

On June 22, Cox denied that request for rehearing, so Travis appealed the case to the higher court on June 26. The appeal takes the case out of Indian River County where city and police officials named in the lawsuit serve on boards with the judge deciding the case, creating suspicion among city employees about potential conflicts and close relationships impacting the case.

Meanwhile the City of Vero Beach is attempting to get reimbursed $6,540.35 for court reporter fees it paid to record and make transcripts of hearings and depositions in the Cook case.