This story is
about the first legal case I ever worked on. It was the very beginning of my
career, and while I planned on going to law school at night, little did I know
that this experience was going to change my life.
San Diego – 1982
Our law firm was
the attorney of record for a large pizza franchise corporation being sued by a
former corporate employee who supervised all the franchises. This pizza chain
encompassed over hundreds of pizza parlors all over southern California.
The pizza
corporation was susceptible to some attack over the years, and they scrambled
to resolve this susceptibility. Previously, they didn't have their hiring
policies fully intact like companies definitely do these days. They didn't regularly perform background checks, or verify social security numbers, or
verify previous employment, and there were errors in how they paid overtime.
To rectify these
errors, management went through every present employee file and cleaned it up,
making sure all pay and benefits were in order. If any past overtime was owed
to an employee, they paid it. Background checks were done as well as making
sure current employees had no ill-will feelings or problems with management.
There were at
least 450 former employees who needed
to be located, contacted and their time sheets gone over to correct any errors.
Management was advised to try and track down as many of these former employees
as possible, and resolve any issues that might expose them to future lawsuits –
smart decision.
Before this
project of locating past employees started, a nasty lawsuit landed on their
door.
This lawsuit was
put into action by one person who was a disgruntled franchise supervisor. This
supervisor worked in the head corporate office for four years and was generally
known to butt heads. You know, the guy no one really gets along with, he is
just tolerated? We all know one of these
types.
Out of nowhere,
the supervisor turns in his resignation, then word is filtering throughout the
corporate offices that he is now
accusing management of not paying overtime to its former employees, citing that
illegal aliens were taken advantage of, and any benefits paid were
discriminatory.
As it turned out,
it looks like the main intent of this former franchise supervisor was to expose
as many illegal employment laws as he could, thinking the corporation would
settle with him and he could make a few hundred grand or more. He was a hater
and wanted to hate corporate America. Even when he was working for the company,
he said things about hating corporate America in an unexpressed resentment sort
of way, but again, he was just tolerated.
It is now going
to cost a bundle, thousands and thousands of dollars for the pizza chain to
prepare its defense before it
even goes to trial.
I guess what I am
trying to set you up for is how one person can bring upon such financial
hardship and turmoil to a group, a company or another individual, when it comes
to frivolous lawsuits. There are people who just want to find a reason to attack
someone and make a few bucks.
But here’s the
good news - IF YOU ARE EVER ATTACKED ON A HUGE SCALE, YOU NEED TO INVESTIGATE
THE ATTACKER AND EXPOSE HIS CRIMES AND HIS LIES. You need to go on the
offensive. This works more often than you think.
So while the
lawyers are busy defending the pizza corporation with all their pretrial legal
briefs, depositions and motions, the investigative trial division was on the
offensive.
The investigators
had their own three part agenda, 1) Investigate this supervisor, expose his
crimes, which will make him back off and drop this lawsuit. 2) Try and locate
every one of the four hundred plus former employees and resolve any possible
outstanding wage or complaint issues. We don’t want the attorneys for the
supervisor to find these employees and depose them. We want to get ahead of any
potential law suits from these former employees and 3) Investigate every pizza franchise
by interviewing all current employees and managers looking for any illegal
situations they might be involved in. We want to make sure we have no further
susceptibility issues at trial, in other words, nothing else the other
attorneys could attack us on.
All of the above
needs to be done before the trial even gets started. You want to know where you
are weak and what your liabilities are, and fix them quickly. You don’t want
any surprises by the other side when you are actually in trial.
There were 12 investigators
to get this agenda done. I was an investigator-in-training and learned that I
had natural abilities for this kind of work. My main job was to work on
locating all the former employees. It took us three to four months to finish
this project. We used the public databases at the city, county and state
agencies to locate people, and good old-fashion street work by visiting old
addresses or relatives. We didn't have the computer technology or the social
media sites that we have today. We actually found two-thirds of them, and
luckily, only a few had issues to resolve. We then had them all sign an affidavit
stating they have no outstanding claims against the pizza chain, no outstanding
ill-will, and have no plans to bring a lawsuit in the future. The former
employees we could not find were actually illegal aliens using stolen social
security numbers. There was no reason to continue to look for them. They have
too much to hide themselves, to even think about suing us.
Then, I worked
with a different group of investigators. We broke up into teams, then visited and
interviewed all the franchise stores’ current employees. We wanted to double
check making sure we had no liabilities with employment law nor did we have employees
we shouldn't have. We reported all of our findings to the corporate office. A
few employees were let go and some quit shortly after we interviewed them. We
had no qualms in telling them why they were being interviewed. Being upfront
with them just expedited the cleaning up process.
Now, to
investigate this supervisor who brought about this lawsuit in the first place,
we had to first, actually investigate our own clients corporate office! We had
to get permission from the attorneys and corporate management to have access
and interview all of the management personnel.
There were
thirty-five corporate employees. We read every employee’s personnel file, and
then interviewed each of them. The
interviews were extensive but well worth it. We got to know our clients management
ream better and decided that no one else on this team was going to go rouge. Plus,
we got a lot of background information on the supervisor suing us.
To each person
interviewed, we asked them an important question having to do with financial
irregularities. We wanted to know if they knew of employees having financial
trouble. Did they borrow money from someone or did others borrow money from
others or was anyone having financial trouble, like losing their house
etc.
This again is a
touchy subject but you want to know what employees, if any, might be
susceptible and desperate enough to steal from the company. Again, you are just
doing a checklist to make sure the client and the company has no outstanding
legal or unethical situations.
After all the
interviews were done, we matched our answers up and two things popped out: 1) Guess
whose name came up four times as having financial trouble? The supervisor suing
us, “Bill”, and 2)Two executives of the management team admitted they would
leave their company ATM cards in their top desk drawers and further admitted
that all the staff knew the pin numbers, in case they needed to buy supplies or
take a client to lunch. They had a huge trust factor in their office. Also, you
have to remember the world was a bit more trustworthy back then. Again, you
wouldn’t see that in today’s business world.
After further
investigation it turns out that over time, someone had been using the ATM
cards, getting cash, to a tune of around $15,000.00, not in large withdrawals
at any one time, just enough cash to stay under the radar. Management had a
policy of doing an audit on these ATM bank statements, but with this trial
preparation and stress, they were actually behind on this audit for a long
time. They didn't really know they had a problem.
So, we went off
our original mission for a bit and focused on who was stealing the money from
the ATM because this might lead us to another liability the company didn't know
it had.
Since the pizza
corporation was our client and one of their own was stealing from them, we didn't want to go to the police as yet. We didn't want to expose out client to another
legal situation, and our client might not have a legal case since they allowed
their staff to use the debit cards.
It took us days
to go through every bank/ATM statement writing down the date and time of every
ATM transaction, then finding receipts or any paper trail of what this money
was spent on and who used the ATM card. We only recovered a lousy 25%. There
was 75% unaccounted for and it came to around $12,000.00.
After getting
approval from the corporate office, we decided that we would just confront this
head on and go see the President of the bank in question. We told the President
all about our current trial, that as investigators, we were looking at any and all
liabilities our client has and clean them up. We showed him the bank statements
and highlighted the date and times of each ATM transaction that we could not
account for. We gave him the names of three employees who were having financial
trouble.
In a dream world,
the bank could just match ATM withdrawals to the deposits of the three
employees, and we’d probably have our man, but we knew the banker could not
give us account information unless we gave him a subpoena, plus we don’t know
where the employees bank. We don’t want to involve any subpoenas at this time
because then we’d have to notify these employees what we were doing, and as
required by law, we’d have to give each employee a copy of the subpoena.
What we wanted
from the bank was this: To take the last ten recent questionable ATM withdrawals,
including the date and time, then match this with the banks security cameras and
verify who was at the ATM at these particular withdrawals.
The bank realized
they had the authority to release this information because with cameras at
every ATM, no one can legally argue the expectation of privacy.
Within five days
we had pictures of the person using the ATM at the time of the unauthorized ATM
transactions. It was the Plaintiff, “Bill”.
We were excited
beyond belief; this turned the whole trial in a new direction.
Immediately, our
lawyers had a meeting with corporate advising them they were now going to issue
subpoenas and scare the crap out of Bill and his attorneys. They were going to
subpoena “Bill’s” entire banking records including deposits, and since we didn't know which bank “Bill” had his money, ten subpoenas were served on every major
bank and credit union in San Diego.
The kicker was
that we also subpoenaed “Bill” for a deposition so we can ask him under oath if
he made these unauthorized ATM transactions. (Bill doesn't know we know about
the bank ATM pictures). The attorneys want to catch him lying under oath, and then
show him his picture at the bank making withdrawals.
The deposition took
place a month or so later. It was absolutely nail-biting waiting to hear what happened.
After four hours, all I remember is attorneys running into our investigative
office and yelling that they had won the case, they were thrilled.
It turned out that
after the Attorneys started asking “Bill” about the ATM transactions, “Bill”
was starting to get real uneasy and then his attorneys starting wondering why “Bill”
was acting uncomfortable.
“Bill” and his
attorneys had no idea we even knew about these ATM heists, they thought we
were there to discuss “Bill’s” bank accounts. This was an excellent ploy on our
part.
Our Attorneys said
that during the deposition, they only asked a few questions regarding the ATM
transactions, when suddenly “Bill” and his Attorneys took a break - one and
half hour break - to “talk" to their client.
When the
deposition resumed, the only thing discussed was the Attorneys for “Bill”
stating they have decided to withdraw the law suit. The Attorneys gave no
reason why, we knew why but did not ask, we didn't care, and knew we won. The
next two hours were taken up by discussing how to word the legal documents to dismiss
this case, who is going to file the dismissal with the court and any other
loose ends.
The entire legal
crew celebrated the victory with our clients the following Friday night with
dinner and drinks. The clients paid for the entire celebration.
Then one of the investigators
asked if I wanted to work for him on upcoming legal trials they had on their
calendar. Then it hit me, this was where I belonged, working on defense legal
trials. At that moment, my career started and never had any doubts.
What a great story! HA!!
ReplyDeletePoor old Bill... I wonder what ever happened to him...
HA!
Good job, you guys!