Plaintiff testifies in wrongful termination suit against U.

The former Penn safety official accusing the University of firing him for blowing the whistle on alleged illegal radiation experiments took the stand yesterday during the first day of his civil trial. The 32 boxes' worth of documents surrounding the attorneys were a preview of the dense material to be used during the estimated three-week wrongful termination trial. The civil suit comes about two years after the plaintiff, Mark Selikson, 49, filed suit in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court against the University, alleging that Penn officials fired him to prevent him from alerting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about illegal radiation experiments being conducted by a Penn professor. At the time, Selikson was the school's director of radiation safety. He had already been involved in earlier federal investigations of the professor, Radiopharmaceutical Science Professor Hank Kung, who had allegedly performed radiation experiments on human subjects. Patricia Pierce, Selikson's attorney, opened the trial by defining for the jury some of the jargon and terms attorneys will be using and outlining the events leading up to and following Selikson's termination. Pierce said she would prove during the trial that Penn scientists were performing illegal experiments, and that officials fired Selikson -- a 10-year Penn employee who also spent 10 years in the same position at George Washington University -- for simply doing his job. But University attorney Alan Berkowitz said that Selikson lost his job because of a private consulting business he ran out of his office at the University for almost seven years. Berkowitz claimed that Selikson hired several of his Radiation Safety employees to work for his private company during the same hours they were being paid by the University. The defense did not respond to that allegation yesterday, though they have said that Selikson ran a private company with the permission of his superiors. But Berkowitz said the University did not know of the company's existence, and that even though it had no assets, equipment or employees of its own, it earned about $220,000 in seven years, with Selikson keeping half of all profits. Even the phone number and fax cover sheets were the University's, Berkowitz said. "[The company] was completely dependent upon the Radiation Safety Office." Berkowitz said Selikson was also terminated because he had a "history of abusing and mistreating" his staff of about 20 people. Instead of Selikson being fired for blowing the whistle on the University, Berkowitz said he was let go because "his staff came forward and blew the whistle on him." After the opening statements and an hour recess, Selikson took the stand for the final 90 minutes of the day, answering his attorney's questions in a confident and animated manner. During his testimony -- which is expected to continue for two more days -- Selikson spoke about his employment history and other personal information, as well as FDA inspections of Kung with which he was involved in the early 1990s. Both attorneys said they were pleased with the start of the trial. "I think it went fine," Pierce said. "I'm pleased with the opening statements and the jury and the testimony so far. We'll just have to see how it goes." Berkowitz also said the first day went well, but added that "there's been nothing new brought out at this point." The highly complex testimony apparently did not go over too well with the jurors. At least half of the eight-person jury dozed off for some portions of the day.