Lottery Connection
GTECH, the Providence, R.I.-based company that on Friday was awarded a $121-million contract to create a computerized system for the California Lottery, will have a San Diego connection.
GTECH is planning to merge with Mistix, a local company founded two years ago that recently signed a five-year deal with the state to provide computerized reservations for all of California’s campsites.
Mistix is also the odds-on favorite to purchase Teleseat from the San Diego Padres, Padres sources say. One team official said the Teleseat sale means that the Padres “won’t be in the ticketing business anymore.”
DEJA VU
Last week’s Tylenol scares brought back eerie memories for Jan Strode, Great American First Savings Bank’s public relations chief.
Strode worked for Firestone when its “500” tires were recalled in 1979, and she handled the crisis PR. Then, when tainted Tylenol first reared its head in 1982, the company called on Strode to assist. On loan from Firestone, Strode helped guide the product through the poisoning scare.
Last week’s product-lacing news “makes you wonder what the company should do from here,” said Strode. “It makes me wonder as far as the image of Tylenol and whether it’s going to happen again and again.”
Prevention, said Strode, is the cutting edge to these situations. Fortunately, “Tylenol felt comfortable about repackaging the product seal and issuing a warning,” she said. “When you live through a recall, you have to weigh out every avenue of possibility of what might happen, and what you can do from it happening again.”
SMALL WORLD
How small a town is San Diego for lawyers? Small. Very small. Lawyers involved in various roles in the Doerring & Associates scandal have some interesting ties to, of all things, the J. David & Co. scam.
Donald McGrath is the attorney representing the court-appointed “disbursing agent,” or receiver, in charge of the once-mighty real estate investment firm, which lured hundreds of prominent San Diegans to invest about $65 million. In the J. David case, McGrath represents several former investors who are protesting the bankruptcy trustee’s attempt to retrieve funds paid out in the 90 days prior to the J. David collapse.
Attorney Richard Annen was a lawyer with the Rogers & Wells law firm, which represented J. David. Annen is a key player in the Doerring case, having supplied the Securities & Exchange Commission with enough evidence against Doerring to justify bringing civil action against the company.
Robert D. Rose is representing four of the seven Doerring owners. Before he entered private practice earlier this month, Rose was the lead prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office on the J. David case.
Finally, attorney Robert Ames, a partner in the old-line Gray, Cary, Ames & Frye law firm, is a Doerring investor and has been relatively active trying to explain what happened at the company. (More than two dozen of his firm’s attorneys were also Doerring clients.) Ames also had a role in J. David, representing Orange County businessman Art Axelrod when Axelrod forced J. David into bankruptcy two years ago.
