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Ani Sanikian was a respected nurse at Kaiser Permanente Fresno and an outspoken advocate for patient care.

In 2014, she was elected by Kaiser nurses to an in-house committee that monitored nursing workload and presented concerns about patient safety to management. But when management ignored the nurses’ complaints, Sanikian had to regularly challenge Lily Tang, the director of nursing practices at Kaiser.

Their complaints came to a head in March 2015 when Sanikian and other committee members marched to the office of Tang’s boss, Lynn Campama, and gave her a signed petition regarding the lack of response to concerns about patient safety.

Two month later, Kaiser, upon Tang’s recommendation, fired Sanikian on trumped-up charges, according to Fresno attorneys Mick Marderosian and Heather Cohen, who represents Sanikian in her wrongful termination trial in Fresno County Superior Court that began Wednesday.

Sanikian has sued the The Permanente Medical Group, a multibillion-dollar corporation of physicians who provide services to more than 11 million Kaiser Permanente members nationwide, including in Northern and Central California. Sanikian is seeking damages for wrongful termination, retaliation and defamation.