Old World Store Owners Assert That Informant Lied

An attorney for a group of store owners at the Old World shopping center in Huntington Beach filed statements in Superior Court Wednesday claiming that a motion to invalidate a $1.2-million civil fraud judgment against the center’s developer is based on a lie by a key informant.

The original focus of Wednesday’s hearing--which has been delayed until Dec. 19--was to have been declarations by attorneys for center developer Josef Bischof that a plaintiff in the original suit now claims that records critical to Bischof’s defense had been stolen from government files and destroyed by two other plaintiffs before the fraud trial began earlier this year.

Jeffrey P. Walsworth and Joseph R. Donahue, Bischof’s lawyers, said the court should overturn the judgment against Bischof because Old World store owner Alfred Skistimas told them that fellow store owners Julietta Lewis and Virgil Batesole destroyed Department of Real Estate documents and Huntington Beach Planning Department records that could have been beneficial to Bischof’s case.

But Robert S. Lewin, attorney for Lewis and Batesole, introduced declarations by two lawyers for the Old World Owners Assn. who say Skistimas now denies having claimed that any documents were removed from government files by Lewis and Batesole.

Lewis, Batesole and Skistimas are among 12 Old World store owners who successfully sued Bischof for misuse of community association funds and for fraudulently representing that he would provide certain amenities for tenants of the unusual condominium-style shopping center, where shop owners or managers are required by deed restrictions to live above their stores.

Skistimas, Bischof’s attorneys said in their declarations, refused to sign a sworn statement of his own unless Bischof would give him a 10% interest in the development company that built Old World.

Meanwhile, in a related federal Bankruptcy Court action in which Bischof is seeking Chapter 11 protection from creditors--mainly the plaintiffs in the fraud case--a judge Wednesday took under submission arguments by the shopkeepers’ attorney that Bischof should not be allowed to claim bankruptcy.