The Chinatown Business Improvement District, run by locally sourced fascist George Yu, has never been easy to get public records out of. In fact, I’ve never managed to get any! In 2018 Katherine MacNenny and I sued the BID for noncompliance. George Yu never participated in the case, and in California CPRA writs don’t issue by default, so we had to argue the whole thing to the judge and then, after we won, had to get an order authorizing the sheriff to seize $75K in fees from the BID’s bank. At one point the judge even issued an order for Yu’s arrest, but he changed his mind. We got the money but we never got the records.
Well, in January 2022, ably repped by Tasha Hill, we had to sue him again over some other records. This time Yu dodged service for six months, but two intrepid volunteers from Chinatown Community for Equitable Development, tracked down Yu at his house and served him. The trial is set for February 26, 2022. This time Yu apparently intended to defend the case because he hired corporate hack CPRA lawyer Christina Cameron, name partner of corporate hack law firm Devaney, Pate, Morris, and Cameron to represent him.
But whatever Yu intended he hasn’t followed through on it. In fact, according to a motion by Yu’s lawyers heard on November 3, 2022, Yu has stopped communicating with them entirely, forcing them to ask the judge to allow them to fire him as a client. According to a letter Cameron sent Yu in September:
Continue reading The Lawyers Repping The Chinatown BID In Our Current CPRA Suit Against Them Asked The Judge To Let Them Quit Because George Yu Won’t Answer Their Phone Calls — And The Judge Said Yes So Yu Is Now Unrepresented