Attorney and plaintiff from decade-long Burbank Unified court case back at it again in fraud lawsuit
An attorney who represented Burbank Unified in a nearly decade-long legal battle, in which the school district lost and was ordered to pay more than $3 million in attorneys’ fees, is now representing a local construction company in a recent lawsuit filed against the same woman who won the years-long case against the school district.
La Crescenta attorney Nancy Doumanian is representing Francisco Javier Primera Jr., who runs the Burbank-based commercial and residential construction company Arco Development Inc.
Primera is suing Danielle Baez and her sister, Gilda, for alleged fraud, according to the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in January.
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Baez was most recently in the headlines after she filed a lawsuit against Burbank Unified in 2007 alleging her former supervisor in the school district made unwanted sexual advances and sent her sexually explicit emails, beginning in 2005.
The lawsuit went to trial three times and played out in court for more than eight years. All the while, Doumanian represented Burbank Unified in that case, which the school district ultimately lost.
In the school district’s final attempt to win the case, Burbank Unified filed an appeal. However, on Jan. 25, the district lost its appeal.
Baez was awarded $200,000 and her attorneys received $3.2 million.
In Primera’s lawsuit, he alleges that Danielle and Gilda Baez, who both worked for his company, committed fraud by using his business checking accounts to pay for personal expenses without his consent, according to the lawsuit, which was filed nearly two years after he first learned about the alleged fraud on April 9, 2014.
Burbank police are also investigating the case.
Primera alleges that the Baez sisters charged upward of $200,000 in “travel expenses, dinners, movie theater tickets, cosmetic procedures and clothing, in addition to a host of other personal expenses” to Primera’s company credit card accounts, according to the lawsuit.
Primera also alleges that Jeff Ho, in working for the Culver City-based accounting firm Tagawa & Ho LLP, helped to “cover up their fraud, theft, embezzlement, negligence and other acts of dishonesty,” court records show.
Doumanian did not return a request to comment on the latest case against Baez.
In another twist, Danielle and Gilda Baez have sued Primera and his company for allegedly failing to compensate them for overtime hours they worked, and failing to pay minimum wage, according to their lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on March 4.
In their lawsuit, Danielle Baez claims she was hired by Primera in 2010, initially as a caregiver for his children, and then his office manager. Gilda Baez was hired to perform office duties in March 2011.
Their lawsuit alleges that by the end of 2013, Gilda was being paid at a rate of $16 per hour, despite Primera promising her that “she would be retroactively compensated at a rate of $25 an hour once the company was in a better financial position,” according to court records.
It is unclear in their lawsuit exactly when Danielle and Gilda Baez stopped working for Primera, but according to the sisters’ lawsuit, by the time they stopped working for him, “no overtime pay had been paid to Gilda and no compensation whatsoever had been paid to Danielle, and neither plaintiff had been given designated meal and rest periods.”
The lawsuit also claims that “In lieu of payment, Primera permitted Danielle gratuitous use of Primera’s American Express business card in exchange for the services she provided.”
As a result of their alleged “loss of income and other economic damages,” Danielle and Gilda Baez seek $275,000, according to court records.
Meanwhile, Primera seeks “an amount exceeding $200,000” for “monies stolen, misused” and “abused,” his lawsuit states.
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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
Alene Tchekmedyian contributed to this story.
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