X-Message-Number: 2308
From:
Subject: Audit Letter, Fee Motion, New Building?
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 02:41:02 PDT
June 20, 1993
To Cryonet
>From Steve Bridge, President
Alcor Life Extension Foundation
1. The Audit Management Letter. Unless you are deeply into such
things, it is not terribly interesting. It is also seven pages long,
not on disk. I refuse to spend hours typing it in and posting it for
a few people. And I still don't believe that it is appropriate to be
posted publicly.
However, I will be happy to mail a copy to any Alcor member who
requests one. I have already mailed one to Charles Platt.
I would also like to point out (in mildly annoyed fashion) that I
have ALREADY summarized the management letter in the magazine in a
full eight paragraphs at the end of my article "Accounting for the
Numbers" in the May, 1993 issue of CRYONICS magazine. I don't think
there are any surprises.
2. Fee Motion. After winning our case against the California
Department of Health Services in late 1992, Alcor initiated a suit
against the state of California to recover approximately $92,000 in
legal fees (the actual amount of fees was much greater, but only
certain classes of fees are potentially recoverable). Since the
motion was being heard by Judge Aurelio Munoz, who made the initial
ruling against the State and who has expressed much anger at employees
of the Department of Health Services for continuing to throw
roadblocks up against Alcor, we thought our chances were very high of
winning our fees back.
The Fee Motion was heard on Thursday, June 17 and ..... we lost.
Not one cent. Judge Munoz said he was "not unsympathetic" to our
case; but that our case did not fit the criteria set down by law for
payment of fees. I quote:
"The Motion is denied. First of all, the court does not feel
that this action was defended in bad faith or was frivolous.
Although the decision of the Court of Appeal now makes the issue
clear and clearly supports the position advocated by the moving party,
at the time this case was before the court the law was not that clear
and the issues not that settled. Some of the fears of the State may
yet come to fruition if scientific technology ever comes up to Alcor's
hopes.
"The request is also denied on the private attorney general
theory. Moving party was really advancing and litigating its own
rights and not that of the general public. Even though the court
realizes that moving parties feel this was a great issue of overriding
public importance, the court disagrees. This was not a right to die
case. Instead, the court was being asked to determine if dead is
really dead when one party with evangelistic fervor was contending
dead is dead, but maybe not completely. What moving parties were
asserting and vindicating were personal to members of organizations
such as Alcor. The benefit to the public at large is speculative and
thus does not warrant the awarding of attorney's fees."
This decision was sent to David Epstein late Wednesday (that is,
a preliminary decision before oral arguments). He argued further in
court and made good points; but Judge Munoz had already decided the
case. This is like an umpire's judgment call in baseball. It can't
be appealed except by calling the judge's honesty into question -- and
after all of the rulings in our favor from Judge Munoz, we could
hardly do that. My impression of the Judge (my first time to see him)
was that he was a fair and thoughtful man who didn't quite see our
point on this one.
3. One good thing happened here though. Two of our whole body
patients (Cynthia Pilgerim and Dick Jones) still did not have
certified Death Certificates, because the state had refused to issue
Death Certificates to cryonics patients at the times these patients
were placed into suspension (1990 and 1988, respectively). When I
tried to re-apply for those Certificates earlier this month, I ran
into another series of barriers from the State Registrar's office in
the Department of Health Services. ("That court ruling only applies
to new patients. For older ones you have to have separate court
orders. And the form has changed since then, so you need to track
down the original doctors for new signatures." etc.)
After our attorneys talked to Deputy Attorney General Tammy
Chung, the cooperation got better immediately. Ms. Chung has already
been called on the carpet by Judge Munoz and she was was highly
anxious to dispose of this problem. When our attorneys brought up
these problems at the Fee Motion in court, Judge Munoz was obviously
irritated. Ms. Chung told Judge Munoz that the State employee who
had spoken to me had been "scolded" for this and had been instructed
to make NO decisions for the State in this regard but to refer any
questions to the Department's Attorney.
Munoz said that if Alcor DID have any more problems
getting Death Certificates, he would take it very personally and he
would invite Alcor's attorney to prepare contempt charges. And he
would make sure that Alcor's attorney fees for THOSE actions were
paid by the State.
We have now received the Death Certificate (and Disposition
Permit) on Mrs. Pilgerim and I hope to have those forms for Dick Jones
shortly.
4. Possible move into new building.
Over the past few weeks, we have been discovering that our
Conditional Use Permit to do business here in Riverside was not at all
complete, and that numerous physical problems with the building
existed which might be very expensive to fix. This is a brief
summary; a longer version will be in the magazine.
First, at the moment we don't really HAVE a Conditional Use Permit.
Our C.U.P. was conditioned on Alcor taking a number of specific actions
within 90 days. That time period expired about a week after I arrived in
California. I thought that only a couple of problems remained to be
solved, but it turned out that many items were incomplete. We have
applied for an extension and the City is very likely to grant it; but
one problem may be unfixable at any reasonable price.
When Alcor and Symbex Property group originally had this facility
built in 1987, a lot of interior construction (including the operating
room and the entire second floor) was done without a permit for
reasons of money and time (we had to leave the place we were in and
permits were taking almost a year to get approved in the building boom
of the time.) So we have to get the permits retroactively.
Unfortunately, some parts were either not built to Code or at least do
not match the current building code (you're judged on when you apply,
not on when you build). It is possible that total cost to file proper
plans and do additional construction could be $30,000 or even higher.
So the urge to leave town has grown stronger among the Board.
Why put $30,000 into this building when you really want to get a new
one anyway?
This past Monday evening, in a special meeting, the Alcor Board
of Directors voted to place a $20,000 deposit on a possible building
in Scottsdale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix). This is NOT the same
building that was nearly purchased one year ago. It is the same one
that was considered about three months ago.
NOTE: Putting a deposit down does not mean we have purchased the
building. This allows us 90 days to examine the financing,
construction, liens, tenant leases, and other aspects of the deal
which we can only find out by making an offer. If we do not like what
we find, we can cancel the deal and get our money back. As a matter
of fact, people are still looking at buildings in Northern California
and possibly other parts of Arizona.
The offer we made (and they accepted) was $770,000 for a building
with approximately 19,800 sq. ft. The building is about ten years old
and has adequate ceiling height for transferring patients from dewars.
(we will post more details in a few days and will be mailing details
to members). The deposit money is from the Patient Care Trust Fund,
on the theory that the PCTF will be an investor in the building anyway
(as it is in the current Alcor facility) and it will be refunded if we
decide not to buy this building.
A Building Fund fund-raising project was just about ready to get
started this month and that will now be kicked into higher gear. The
precise method of ownership (limited partnership, Alcor ownership, or
combination of the two) hasn't been established yet; but I hope to
have news on this in a few days.
I will be in Arizona myself for three days at the end of next
week, speaking with city and state officials and Arizona attorneys to
determine the degree of cooperation or hostility which is present. If
Arizona is better for cryonics than California, we want to be there.
If we are heading someplace WORSE, we want to find that out as soon as
possible so we can re-focus on staying in California.
Steve Bridge
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