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A San Ramon man was awarded more than $1.7 million last month in a whistleblower retaliation case that went to trial in San Joaquin County after he was terminated from his position with the county’s behavioral health department.
The verdict came at the conclusion of a weekslong trial on Dec. 19, in which the jury sided with Khurram Durrani, who had worked as a staff psychiatrist with the county for 11 years before being promoted to medical director of its mental health program, then terminated after six years in that position.
A spokesperson for San Joaquin County said that the county does not comment on litigation.
According to Durrani’s attorney Lawrance Bohm, the psychiatrist was “cruelly fired for sending an email explaining to his psychiatrist staff how the county’s (very vague and confusing) incentive plan is calculated” in 2019. Durrani’s amended lawsuit was filed in 2021.
“We were delighted to represent Dr. Durrani – he is a brilliant psychiatrist who served until he was unfairly fired in November 2019 for a host of totally bogus reasons after he reported numerous illegal activities by his boss, the Director of the department,” Bohm said.
“This case proved that there was a huge wealth of shady dealings that Dr. Durrani had to report, after the County of San Joaquin hired Tony Vartan to be the new Director of Behavioral Health Services, beginning in October 2017,” he continued. “I am extremely happy to have won for Dr. Durrani well-deserved compensation, after the past eight years of working to clear his good name and reputation.”
Vartan departed his post in San Joaquin County in 2022 for the same role in Stanislaus County according to LinkedIn, where he served until March 2025 before going into private consulting. Genevieve Valentine was appointed as his successor before being promoted to director of healthcare services. The current director of behavioral health services is Fay Vieira, who served as interim director before being appointed to the position permanently in November 2025.
Bohm said that Durrani had taken the risk of reporting numerous issues, including non-physicians making treatment decisions, bullying and intimidation by senior leadership, fraudulent data being submitted to the state, treatment from non-credentialed doctors, and “racial insensitivity toward Latinos.”
Bohm said that the county broke the law initially by cutting services at its behavioral health department “so severely that the county fell out of compliance with state regulations,” then falsifying data in order to cover up its lack of compliance.
“…Durrani, as a whistleblower, reported the fraud to the State of California,” Bohm said. “Subsequently, the State investigated and levied a massive financial penalty on the County. Dr. Durrani knew he exposed the County’s malfeasance at his own peril. Indeed, shortly after exposing the County, it terminated Dr. Durrani’s employment.”
In addition to losing his job, Bohm said that Durrani – a longtime, respected psychiatrist – was the subject of unfair “character assasination,” something that he added is typical in medical whistleblower cases.
“This is the second case I’ve had in a row where a career and reputation of one of our clients got ruined by their talking about work in a professional manner,” Bohm said. “The defamation of Dr. Durrani’s career was no surprise in the world of medical whistleblowing — it is expected. I can no longer diagnose a medical whistleblower retaliation case without character assasination.”
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