No Pizza Here--Directory Delivers a Wrong Number

It began with a single call for a pizza. Sorry, wrong number, Rose-Marie Malek-Yonan told the hungry caller. This is an artist management company--not a pizza parlor.

By the fourth pizza-seeking caller, Malek-Yonan learned it was not a mistake. The phone number for GMY and Associates--a father and daughter business run out of the Malek-Yonans’ Glendale home--was listed in the Donnelly Directory as the number for a local Domino’s Pizza.

Since April, thousands of Domino’s customers have called the Malek-Yonan home day and night, interfering with business, using up answering machine tape, and disturbing the family’s sleep, she said Monday. Malek-Yonan was willing to change the agency’s number, she said, but the pizza parlor and phone book firm would not pay the costs--which she estimated at $40,000--for ads and to notify clients.

So she and her father have filed suit in Glendale Superior Court against Domino’s Pizza, Donnelly Information Publishing, and Yellow Pages Marketing Services--an advertising agency--seeking $750,000 for emotional distress, negligence and lost business.

A Donnelly Directory spokeswoman said the company simply printed the advertisement that was submitted to it by the advertising agency. Steve Bergan, a supervisor for the Domino’s franchise, said the advertising agency told him it was working out the problem with the Malek-Yonans. Yellow Pages Marketing could not be reached for comment.

Monica Malek-Yonan, George’s other daughter, who handles the company’s legal affairs, said 35 to 40 people call the house each day during business hours for pizza, and calls increase at night and on weekends.

“The phone rings every five minutes,” until 2 a.m., she said. “In the beginning it was funny,” but now “it is a nightmare.”