Suit Claims Nissan Planted ‘Spy’ in Costa Mesa Home

Last summer, Stephen and Maritza French rented a room in their Costa Mesa house to a quiet, bespectacled Japanese man. At the time, the Frenches say, they thought Takashi Morimoto was just another foreign visitor, a polite and curious young man learning the language and customs of the United States.

In reality, the couple now contend, Morimoto was a corporate snoop.

Unbeknown to the Frenches, the 29-year-old Nissan Motor Corp. employee was studying their every move as part of a research project for the Japanese car maker, the couple contend. They only discovered Morimoto was some sort of automotive mole upon reading a newspaper article that detailed his curious mission.

Irked that their lives had been under a corporate microscope, the French family filed a lawsuit Thursday against Morimoto and the car maker claiming fraud, invasion of privacy, trespassing and unfair business practices.

The lawsuit, filed in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, also seeks a court order forbidding Nissan from dispatching emissaries like Morimoto into the homes of other unsuspecting families, stating that the firm is “engaging in a pattern and practice of conducting market research by invading the privacy of American consumers.”

“They just feel outraged,” said Nancy Kaufman, the Santa Ana attorney representing the Frenches. “They just wonder what he was writing down, what about their private lives is in a Nissan file somewhere. They feel violated, they really do.”

In a nine-page legal complaint, the family alleges Morimoto “intentionally misrepresented and concealed” the reason for his six-week stay with the couple and their two daughters, 22-year-old Sherylinn and Danielle, 13.

“Morimoto’s true purpose in renting a room from (the French family) was to spy upon them and to record and use every perceivable aspect of their private lives for the commercial purposes of Nissan,” the lawsuit contends.

A spokesman for Nissan Motor Corp. in Carson said he could not comment since the firm has not yet been served with the lawsuit, which also asks for unspecified monetary damages.

“We have not seen any documents and cannot comment until we get a chance to read the complaint,” said E.C. Mueller, a media relations manager for Nissan.

For several years, Japanese auto makers have made a practice of dispatching researchers to study American families in an effort to better understand the strengths, foibles, likes and dislikes of the U.S. car-buying public. Typically, the families are asked to voluntarily participate in the research.

The lawsuit also named Makoto Tachikawa, a product strategy director for Nissan, and two firms allegedly involved in placing Morimoto in the French household, Academic Recruit Communication International of Los Angeles and the Japanese American Cultural Center.

Chiey C. Nomura and Terry Terasaki, officials with the two organizations who were also named in the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Nomura was out of the country and Terasaki did not return a phone call from The Times.

Kaufman said the episode unfolded after the French family responded in June to a newspaper advertisement that Nomura placed in an effort to find homes for Japanese students.

“They thought it might be interesting,” the attorney said, noting that the couple also looked forward to making some extra cash by renting the spare room in their house.

Stephen French, an accountant, contacted the placement service, but was told by Nomura and Terasaki that no student was available, according to the suit. Instead, the two men suggested that the family find a spot for Morimoto, who moved in on June 16.

Kaufman said the family was aware that Morimoto worked for Nissan but thought he was engaged in some sort of temporary project at the firm’s U.S. headquarters in Carson and wanted to stay with an American family simply “to improve his English and general knowledge of the country.”

Morimoto proved a hospitable guest during his stay, she said, accompanying the family on a trip to the Magic Mountain amusement park, helping them wash their car and chatting on numerous occasions with Maritza French, an electronics technician. When his visit ended on July 31, Morimoto and the French family parted “as friends,” Kaufman said.

The family was shocked and outraged when they saw an Oct. 2 article in The Times on the car culture of Southern California that contained three paragraphs outlining Morimoto’s stay with them over the summer, the attorney said.

It said that Nissan had dispatched Morimoto, an intern from the Tokyo headquarters, to the middle-class Costa Mesa neighborhood to “unearth” the life style of an American town as part of the effort to design a future car model targeted to U.S. consumers. Morimoto, the story said, was among several “operatives” who were lured to Southern California by the region’s trend-setting image.

The article went on to state that Morimoto had spent his time with the Frenches “observing, questioning and filling up pages of a notebook each night in his guest room.” He also accompanied the family to shopping centers, photographed their house from dozens of angles and shot photos of other houses in the neighborhood, the article said.

Within days of learning about Morimoto’s mission in their house, the family got a letter from Tachikawa, the Nissan product strategy director, noting that The Times article had been published, Kaufman said.

The family has been “exploring their legal options ever since they first found out what happened,” the attorney said. “They were reluctant at first because they don’t want their privacy further invaded. They don’t want to talk to reporters, they don’t want to be interviewed.”

Kaufman said the family has learned that Morimoto is now on a similar research mission in Boston with another family. The Frenches, she said, would like to see any such practices by the auto manufacturer halted.

“Nissan thinks this is an acceptable method of conducting research,” Kaufman said. “Perhaps in some places it is acceptable, but I don’t think it is in California.”