Days after an Orange County jury awarded him $10 million in a lawsuit against his attorney for malpractice, former Orange County Treasurer Chriss Street said his six-year crusade to clear his name serves as a “road map to justice.”
Ever since Street got socked with a $7-million judgment against him by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge for breaching his fiduciary duty when he controlled a trust over seven years, Street has worked to clear his name, blaming his legal woes on an attorney, Phil Greer, who he said did not do his job right.
Working as his own attorney, with his wife helping, Street prepared his case for trial. Then, he hired attorneys to make the case for him in court and a unanimous jury on Thursday awarded him $7.5 million for professional negligence and $2.5 million for fraudulent misrepresentation.
“I think this is just the first step toward getting my reputation and my life back,” Street told City News Service Monday.
“It was a hard-fought, slog, because (claimants represented without attorneys) have an enormous challenge, and the tenacity of my family sticking with me and supporting me was everything.”
Street said he never considered filing for bankruptcy after he was ordered to pay $7 million “even though everyone said that was the easy way to go. I was determined to fight the good fight and run the race.”
Messages left with Greer and his attorney, Steve Young, were not immediately returned.
In 1998, Street became the court-appointed trustee for the End of the Road Trust, which came out of the Fruehauf Trailer Corp. bankruptcy. He was forced out in 2005.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Richard M. Neiter ruled in March 2010 that Street tried to build a truck-trailer manufacturing empire out of the trust’s assets, but wasted millions of dollars.
Neiter ruled that Street used some trust money to pay for personal expenses and did not liquidate the assets as he was supposed to.
Street’s attorney, Russel Myrick, however argued that Greer “failed to put forward strong evidence that vindicated Chriss.”
Street received the bankruptcy committee’s approval and relied on legal advice for how he handled the trust, Myrick said.
“As long as he did that he was protected,” Myrick said. “His attorney failed to put on any evidence that would have shown Chriss received proper approval for the transaction.”
Greer “missed a pretrial conference” in which the other side’s attorney “put forward a number of facts he proposed to be the facts of the case and because Mr. Greer missed that hearing they became the controlling facts of the case,” Myrick said.
“So, in effect, the trial was over before it began,” Myrick said. “We had to prove Mr. Street did not breach his fiduciary duties and did not act in his own self-interests.”
“It’s our position that Mr. Street has been fully vindicated,” Myrick said.
The next legal step is to try to get the record changed in the bankruptcy proceeding, Myrick said.
The scandal from the bankruptcy judge’s ruling “pretty much ended Chriss’ political career,” Myrick said.
Street decided not to seek another term following the ruling in 2010. Since then, he has worked many odd jobs while working on his suit against Greer.
“I was willing to take the lowest jobs and make the littlest amount of money and just stay with it,” Street said. “We were living in Big Canyon when this happened. Talk about a fall from a pretty lofty plane.”
Street said he “never saw it coming,” when he lost the bankruptcy case.
“I thought justice was being served,” he said of the trial in 2010. “I thought, `here’s the facts, justice will be served,’ and I got there and it was a high-tech lynching.”
After the ruling, the Orange County Board of Supervisors stripped away Street’s investment authority and he was subjected to withering criticism for his investments for the county.
Seven years later, Street was in court again, this time a winner.
“There is justice, but you have to fight for it,” Street said. “You can get justice in America and in Orange County I proved it.”
—City News Service