“Hey, neener neener. Gotcha sucker.”
–The unamused view California appellate court justices took in a May 3 opinion describing the tactic Costa Mesa's TruSpeed Motorcars employed to avoid honoring a contract it had with Alex Wald, who was hired to find and negotiate the purchase of used Porsches. During a two-month period, Wald secured 11 vehicles for the company and was due at least $40,000 in agreed upon finder's fees. But TruSpeed officials decided they could “commit outright fraud” on Wald by paying him nothing because they knew he didn't have a state salesperson license, according to the opinion written by a three-justice panel at a Santa Ana-based court of appeal. This ruling overturned a decision by Superior Court Judge Gregory Munoz, who had sided with the company. Demonstrating their contempt for the lower court's findings, the justices asserted that to agree with Munoz would “be to allow the car dealership to get away with a perfect crime.” Wald can now get his day in court.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
