Ex-employer sues founder of charity
Trouble keeps hounding Michael Kerr, the man who organized an all-expenses-paid trip to Disneyland in December for the families of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On the heels of the state attorney general scrutinizing his charity’s financial records, Kerr’s former employer has now sued him for allegedly failing to repay a $6,000 salary advance.
The case appears similar to a $78,000 judgment leveled against Kerr in 2000 after another employer filed suit against him.
According to documents submitted last week in Small Claims Court, the 47-year-old Laguna Niguel resident didn’t return advance commissions he allegedly received last year while working as a commercial real estate consultant for the Saywitz Co. of Newport Beach.
Kerr was employed by Saywitz from April to November 2006. Although Saywitz says Kerr pocketed $6,000 in advances, the lawsuit seeks $5,000, the maximum in small claims cases.
Company president Barry Saywitz declined to comment Wednesday.
Kerr issued an e-mail statement saying he was “diligently working to take care of all outstanding issues including misrepresentations by others directed at us.” He added that he was “deeply saddened to find that there are individuals who seem only focused on the negative aspects that have surrounded my life and are not interested in the good we attempted to do and continue to attempt to do for our troops.”
A judge is scheduled to hear the case Feb. 28.
The allegations mirror those in an Arizona lawsuit. In that case, the Equis Corp. said Kerr skipped out on more than $78,000 in advance real estate commissions after resigning from the company’s Phoenix office in 1998.
Kerr didn’t dispute the claim. In a January 2000 letter to the court, he wrote, “I am a recovering alcoholic and as part of my recovery it is necessary for me to make financial amends for the trouble I caused while in the grips of my disease.”
Kerr requested an out-of-court settlement, saying a public verdict would “make it difficult for me to attain better employment and housing.”
The case came back to haunt Kerr while he organized last year’s Snowball Express, a mid-December charity event that brought 895 family members of fallen troops to Orange County for a free visit to Disneyland, a hockey game, a shopping spree and other programs.
News reports also revealed that Kerr had an outstanding arrest warrant in Arizona for failing to pay nearly $50,000 in child support. He had also had his securities license suspended in 1998 -- and his biography on the Saywitz Co. website falsely stated that Kerr had graduated from UC Santa Barbara.
Kerr blamed the biographical errors on Saywitz. He produced a copy of the resume he said he gave the company, but it also contained wrong information, exaggerating by several years the length of time he had worked for previous employers.
In late December, state officials requested financial records from Kerr’s nonprofit foundation, the M. Scott Kerr Foundation. A spokeswoman for Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown described the action as routine when a charity misses the deadline for registering with the state.
Kerr said the registration problem was an oversight and that none of the $132,000 raised by his foundation was misused.
