Toyota sudden acceleration lawsuit in SD

Toyota would be crazy if it ever let this lawsuit filed by relatives of CHP Officer Mark Saylor get anywhere near a San Diego jury.

Saylor and three family members were killed last year when a Lexus ES 350 accelerated out of control in Santee, east of San Diego.

This horrific 911 call recorded the family’s final minutes as they sped into an intersection on northbound SR-125. The final words heard from the vehicle were “hold on” and “pray.”

The 272-horsepower Lexus was moving at between 112 and 150 (!) miles per hour when it crashed and burst into flames, likely due to overheated brakes, according to the crash report.

Bob Baker Lexus of El Cajon better have good lawyers too.

The crash vehicle was a loaner from Bob Baker. Investigators found that the dealership installed the wrong floor mats, causing the accelerator to become stuck.

Another customer who had borrowed the crash vehicle four days earlier told Sheriff’s investigators that the accelerator had gotten stuck under the floor mat, a fact he reported to the Bob Baker receptionist.

The crash report also noted that electronic or computer-generated malfunction “should not be ruled out.”

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in San Diego Superior Court by Jim Gomez and Tim Pestotnik, a pair of local attorneys. Pestotnik declined to tell the Wall Street Journal whether settlement talks with Toyota had already occurred.

Where's Alan?

Three former directors of the nation’s customs and border patrol agency say the Senate is taking far too long to confirm Alan Bersin as commissioner.

Obama nominated Bersin, a former U.S. Attorney and schools chief in San Diego, in September.

The nomination is stalled in the Senate Finance Committee, which hasn’t even scheduled a hearing. A staffer tells Government Executive that the committee is “reviewing Bersin’s paperwork.”

Raymond Kelly, Robert Bonner and W. Ralph Basham, who led the agency from 1998 to 2009, have written letters urging senators to get a move on.

Having experienced the nomination process ourselves, we would hope that the “forest” of filling this critical position expeditiously is not getting lost in the “trees” of pre-hearing questions designed to elicit policy positions or parochial commitments from the nominee before he even has the benefit of knowing the agency from the inside.

Parochial commitments? What’s up with that?

San Diego a mecca for gay prosecutors?

Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, praised President Obama today for nominating Laura E. Duffy, an out lesbian, for U.S. Attorney for San Diego.

If confirmed by the Senate, Duffy would be the second openly gay person to serve as a U.S. attorney, DC Agenda reported last week. The Senate confirmed Jenny Durkan last year as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington.

San Diego’s District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis made national headlines in 2002 when she became the first openly gay district attorney elected in the United States. Her sexuality hasn’t been much of an issue.

Duffy, who has earned high marks for her prosecution of the Arellano-Felix drug cartel, would have been  disqualified during the Bush administration. The DOJ’s Inspector General found that two former aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had used sexual orientation as a litmus test in personnel decisions.

AG Subpoenas Encore Capital Group

Haven’t seen this anywhere.

San Diego-based Encore Capital Group, which collects on bad credit card debts, has disclosed that it is the subject of a state investigation:

On January 6, 2010, the Office of the Attorney General of the State of California, the “California Attorney General,” issued a subpoena to us to answer interrogatories and to produce documents in a proceeding entitled “In the Matter of the Investigation of Encore Capital Group, Inc., Midland Credit Management, Inc. [an Encore subsidiary] and Affiliated Persons and Entities” concerning our debt collection practices and related topics. We intend to cooperate fully with the California Attorney General in response to this subpoena, subject to applicable law.

The Federal Trade Commission has also ordered Encore to submit information about its practices. “Consumers have reported that debt collectors frequently try to collect from the wrong consumers or the wrong amounts, or both,” the FTC reports. Encore is one of the nine biggest consumer debt buyers that collectively buy 75 percent of all consumer debt sold in the United States.

Business at Encore, as you might expect, is good. Net income in 2009 was $33 million up 238 percent from $13 million the previous year.

Encore has several strategies to collect on bad credit card debts, relying principally on a network of lawyers in the United States and a call center in Gurgaon, India and elsewhere.

It costs Encore about 50 cents for every dollar it recovers.  Last year it collected nearly half a billion dollars.

What Happened At La Jolla Bank? Part II

La Jolla Bank, which failed last week amid allegations of possible fraud, is the subject of a Nevada lawsuit that has a great cast of characters.

It involves a Republican Senate candidate, a flamboyant San Diego real estate broker, a basketball coach known for chewing towels, a horse farm that once belonged to Don Drysdale, and allegations of fraud.

The Tarkanian family sued La Jolla Bank in January to stop it from foreclosing on 13 acres of vacant land on south Las Vegas Boulevard. (See 1 and 2.)

The Tarkanians are a prominent Las Vegas family: Danny Tarkanian is a Republican who’s trying to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. His dad, Jerry, is the former towel-chewing men’s basketball coach at UNLV; his mom, Lois, is a Las Vegas councilwoman.

La Jolla Bank lent $25.5 million in 2005 to the Tarkanians and their partners, with the Las Vegas land as security.

The Tarkanians planned to loan some of that money to Solana Beach broker-turned-developer Robert A. Dyson Jr. for an “equestrian destination resort” in Anza, California on land once owned by Dodgers great Don Drysdale.

Unbeknownst to the Tarkanians, however, Dyson already owed money to La Jolla Bank for the Anza project. He paid off some of his La Jolla Bank loans with the money that the Tarkanians borrowed from the same bank.

The North County Times reported last year that Dyson and his wife made a fortune selling high-end coastal real estate only to file for bankruptcy in 2008. Some juicy details:

“The trustee supervising their bankruptcy recommended in December that the couple abandon the Rancho Santa Fe home that they bought in June 2005 because debt and liens account for nearly its entire $7 million value. A later filing by the trustee recommended they give up a $90,000 leased Porsche sports car and their $3.2 million home in Palm Desert, which is in foreclosure.”

The Tarkanians’ lawsuit describes Dyson as friends with Rick Hall, La Jolla Bank’s president, and says he attended regular meetings and events at the bank.

The bank’s “main owner,” Frank Warren, served as the landlord for several of Dyson’s real estate offices, according to the Tarkanians’ lawsuit.

“Because of the close connection between Mr. Dyson and La Jolla Bank, La Jolla Bank was well aware of the perilous web created by Mr. Dyson in which it aided Mr. Dyson,” the suit states.