Sour Karcher Investment Adds to Woes : Courts: His role in a defunct building products company has brought him a $4-million lawsuit alleging fraud.

An investment in a now-defunct Fontana building-products company is adding to Carl N. Karcher’s financial woes, court documents show.

Karcher, founder of the Carl’s Jr. restaurant chain, invested more than $4.5 million in Trusscrete Corp., which folded in 1990 without ever having turned a profit. Now, in a case set for trial early next year, a former Trusscrete customer is suing Karcher for more than $4 million in connection with a disputed 1987 business deal. The lawsuit alleges fraud by Trusscrete and Karcher.

That legal tussle adds to the woes of the 76-year-old businessman as he fights to regain control of Carl Karcher Enterprises, the fast-food company that he founded 52 years ago. Karcher, who was removed two weeks ago as the company’s chairman, is also trying to solve personal financial problems generated by a string of investments that have gone sour.

Karcher on Thursday won a temporary financial reprieve when four Orange County businessmen completed a previously announced plan to pay off $4.8 million of his bank debt in exchange for 641,000 shares of company stock that Karcher had pledged as collateral for a loan from Commercial Center Bank in Santa Ana.

News of that agreement gave a boost to Karcher Enterprises’ stock, which jumped 50 cents a share to close at $8.125 in Thursday’s Nasdaq trading.

The transaction reduced Karcher’s stake in the Carl’s Jr. restaurant chain, but it also freed him to deal with a $25.1-million loan from Union Bank that also is in default. Karcher spokesman Steven Fink said Thursday that negotiations are continuing between Karcher and Union Bank.

The Trusscrete suit was filed in Central District Court in Santa Ana in 1990 but is not slated for trial until January, 1994.

According to court records, Karcher’s first investment in Trusscrete came in 1984, when the Karcher family trust made the first of nearly 40 loans to the building-products company. Karcher had been repaid only about $500,000 of that money when the company failed in late 1990, and most of what was recovered came from an asset sale.

The suit, filed by Dondeb Construction Co., a Canadian corporation, says Trusscrete failed to deliver $360,000 worth of building panels, thus setting back a major apartment construction project in Ontario, Canada.

Karcher’s attorneys say that Trusscrete never received an order for the disputed panels and that Trusscrete told Dondeb it would not ship any panels because Dondeb’s building design was faulty.

Dondeb’s suit targets Trusscrete but also alleges that the Fontana company was “the alter ego” of Karcher because of his heavy investment in it through his family trust.

Karcher’s attorneys tried unsuccessfully to sever Karcher and the trust from the suit, arguing that Karcher was no more than a passive investor.

“In all the years that the Karcher Trust had an interest in (Trusscrete), Carl Karcher came onto the premises no more than one time,” according to a deposition by a former Trusscrete official.