A Key Figure in S&L;’s Failure : Janet McKinzie Too Ill to Testify, Doctor Says

Lawyers, investigators and FBI agents queuing up to question Janet F. McKinzie, a central figure in the collapse of North America Savings & Loan Assn. in Santa Ana, may have a long wait. Her doctor said she is too ill to testify for the “foreseeable future.”

Dr. George A. Gross, a Sacramento psychiatrist, wrote in a letter submitted in an Orange County Superior Court case that McKinzie was hospitalized earlier this month with a “life-threatening condition.” She was suffering from depression, severe weight loss, electrolyte imbalances (abnormal mineral concentrations in the blood) and grand mal (epileptic) seizures.

Gross, who said he has treated McKinzie “for some years,” wrote that McKinzie was under his care at a Sacramento hospital from Feb. 4 to Feb. 20 and now is being treated on an outpatient basis.

“At the present time and in the foreseeable future, she is not able to be deposed,” Gross wrote.

New civil litigation lawyers for McKinzie provided the doctor’s letter in an attempt to delay Friday’s deadline for answering a $5-million civil suit filed against her by Imperial Bank.

But Superior Court Commissioner Ronald L. Bauer refused to extend the deadline, saying her apparent inability to testify at a deposition had little bearing on McKinzie’s ability to help her lawyers prepare her initial answer to the bank’s complaint.

Imperial Bank claims that McKinzie, 37, and the late Duayne D. Christensen, owner of North America Savings, provided false and forged documents, including phony certificates of deposit, to obtain a $2-million loan extension in December.

Separately, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. has sued McKinzie in U.S. District Court, claiming that she defrauded the institution of more than $20 million through illegal self-dealing, violations of federal laws and “conflicts of interest of the grossest order.”

And the FBI and the state attorney general’s office have opened fraud and embezzlement investigations.

Christensen, 56, died in a single-car crash on Jan. 16, hours before state regulators seized his S&L.; A week later, federal regulators put the S&L; into receivership.