Royal Oakes And Mark Hood

The John Phillips Show

Broadcasting live from the Union Rescue Mission's 'Over the Edge' event at the Universal Hilton, the episode features discussions on signifi

Key takeaways

• A massive fire at a Boyle Heights cold storage facility has triggered billion-dollar lawsuits despite the city's inability to identify the cause.
• Auditors have uncovered significant waste within the California high-speed rail project, including luxury travel and nightclub expenses charged to the authority.
• Legal disputes are intensifying in the estates of major icons like Dolly Parton as trustees clash with family members over financial management.
• Mark Hood argues that addressing homelessness requires tackling root causes like addiction and trauma rather than focusing solely on housing provision.
• The fentanyl epidemic is identified as a primary driver of the worsening homelessness crisis, making addiction much harder to break.

Main topics

• Boyle Heights fire litigation
• High-speed rail fraud audit
• Celebrity estate legal battles

Conclusion

The episode serves as a sobering look at the intersection of legal neg

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:02) It's the John Phillips Show, live from Speaker 3 (0:05) the Union Rescue Missions Over the Edge event. Speaker 4 (0:08) Come up and check out the live show. Then, your mission, should you choose to accept it, Speaker 3 (0:13) rappel down 25 stories to help fight homelessness in L.A. Not a fan of heights or hanging off the side of buildings? You can still support this great cause by donating at urm.org slash o-t-e. That's urm.org slash o-t-e. Now, nervously gripping their microphones and seriously reconsidering their life choices, here are John Phillips and Randy Wang. And we continue Speaker 8 (0:39) live from the Universal Hilton. Johnny, we're broadcasting live from the Over the Edge event. Let me show everyone what's going on here. Kevin's got the mobile camera. People are rappelling down the side of the Universal Hilton for the Union Rescue Mission. 25 stories. I've done it before. It is wild. Our producer, Tricia, and our... Program Director Art are going to be rappelling down the side of this building any time now. If you want to do this, you want to raise money for the Union Rescue Mission, help out this great cause and rappel down the side of a massive, massive hotel, just go to urm.org slash O-T-E. And if you see people coming down Speaker 6 (1:27) the Universal Hilton, Speaker 5 (1:29) they're Speaker 6 (1:30) raising money for the Union Rescue Mission. If you see people... coming off the top of the Universal Sheraton, they got caught cheating. Speaker 8 (1:43) We're Speaker 6 (1:44) here Speaker 8 (1:44) until 3. Speaker 6 (1:45) 800-222-5222 is telephone number 1-800-222-5222. It is our pleasure to welcome our next guest to the program. He is the ABC News legal analyst and host of the Too Many Lawyers podcast, which he hosts with his son, Connor, who's a very bright attorney, former intern at KABC for McIntyre in the Morning. He's also the author of the column, Two Lawyers Walk Into a Bar. You can get that at Substack. Royal Oaks, welcome. Speaker 4 (2:17) Thank you. You know, this is a big opportunity for me, John, because you and Randy and Art and Frank are there. Josh and I could have a hostile takeover of the station. We're here at KBC. We may just change the locks. That's fine. I'll work from home. Okay. All right. You got me. Speaker 6 (2:39) All right, well, let's start out by talking about the environmental and public health disaster going on in Boyle Heights right now, where you had that fire at the cold storage facility. Initially, it was reported by the news that the fire started on the roof of that building due to solar panels that weren't supposed to be plugged in being plugged in. Took a very long time to put the fire out. It took a very long time to take out all of the rotting food. That neighborhood stinks. Speaker 8 (3:12) You can smell it right here. Speaker 6 (3:14) People are getting sick. It's just a bad situation all the way around. So, of course, you want to find out what happened. So you have to have a report after the situation is resolved so you can look back and figure out just exactly who's at fault, what was the point of failure. The city of Los Angeles completed that report a month ago. And they sat on it for a month, despite the fact that news organizations were requesting to review it. They didn't provide it. They waited a month before they made it public. And in the report, they said, we don't know how the fire started. Your thoughts on all of this? It Speaker 4 (3:54) sounds like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch, like they put on it at 1255 a.m., John. I mean, it was so silly. It has been three months. since the fire and they have a big press conference and they give us all the facts, you know, oh my gosh, people are being sued for a billion dollars, 500,000 square feet were burned up, 89 million pounds of food, it burned for eight days and thank you for coming, that's all we've got. Oh no, we have no idea what caused the fire. All they know is, first of all, it started on the roof. Well, that's helpful. And then the other thing they know is, well, it was sort of adjacent in somewhere in the vicinity of a 12,400 panel solar array. But we're not saying that the solar array was the cause or anything. So you have to wonder where our tax dollars are going, John, because you'd think after two or three months, they'd be able to figure out. Now, it's going to be litigated to the 23rd century and back because there are suits totaling a billion dollars that have been filed. But we still have no clue as to what caused this stinking, rotten, horrible mess. Speaker 6 (5:03) Here's what I don't understand. And you've been a part of many insurance cases over the years. You know this world backwards and forwards. Everyone seems to be blaming the cold storage facility. You have really three parties involved here. You have the group that owns the building. You have the group that operates the cold storage facility that just rents the space from the group that owns the building. And then you have a third group that has the solar panels on the roof. If the solar panels are what started the fire, to my eye, they're responsible for all of the damage that went on. The cold storage facility... They're victims of a fire that was started by someone other than them, yet they seem to be the villain here. Everyone seems to be blaming them. Why do you think that is? Do you think that they have a policy that pays more? Do you think it's because the city doesn't want people to be afraid to have solar panels in their community because of the fire risk? Why do you think the cold storage company is the one that's taking it on the chin? Speaker 4 (6:10) I think you put your finger on a couple of key elements. Number one, insurance is a big deal. Whenever there's a catastrophe, then you just sue anybody and everybody who might have an insurance policy. I'll give you an example. Remember the great white band? It was a horrible fire. I think 100 people perished in a fire when pyrotechnics went wrong in Providence, Rhode Island, 25 years ago. They sued everybody, including the radio station that advertised that afternoon, hey, Great White is going to be at the station nightclub. You know, absolutely no basis for the lawsuits. But if there's a deep pocket, then you sue them. The other thing is just sort of politically, yeah, if people have it in for the solar industry or the insurance industry or whatever, it's very convenient to sue. The problem is when you litigate. Every side hires a bunch of fancy experts who are paid big bucks to say, my client didn't do anything, but the other guys did. And that's fine. A jury has to sort it out. That's where the fire department comes in. They don't have a dog in the hunt. They're the ones that should actually have an objective view at what causes the fire. I mean, think about the horrible fires in Altadena and so on. People can presume. Well, it was probably the utilities. You know, their lines probably came down, caused the fire. And maybe they did. But until we know for sure from an objective investigator, it's all speculation and the biases come into play. Speaker 6 (7:36) What should the cold storage facility do at this point? And I ask that question because all of this blame that's being directed at them is causing real-world damages. The city is now saying they may not give them the permits to rebuild so they can have a cold storage facility in that neighborhood. Certainly all of the blame that's been pointed at them is causing lawsuits to pop up from people who live in the neighborhood against them. All of this speculation and all of this blame that elected officials have been participating in, the news has been participating in, it is slitting the throat of that company when, in reality, they're probably not even at fault. Speaker 4 (8:18) And it's Speaker 6 (8:19) a Speaker 4 (8:19) real problem for him. It reminds you of the, I think it was Ted Stevens, the Alaska senator years ago. He was put on trial for some sort of corruption. And then, whoops, turns out he was absolutely innocent. After he'd been convicted, then it came out he was innocent. And he goes to the press and he says, where do I go to get my reputation back? Well, the cold storage folks are in the same boat. Where do they go to get their reputation back if it's determined later on that they actually were innocent? Now, if people out in public say defamatory things about them, they can sue them. But good luck, you have to. prove that they really knew they were lying. If you're in the context of a lawsuit, you can say pretty much anything you want. There's a litigation privilege and you can't get sued unless. If the cold storage people could establish that they were sued with malicious intent, meaning the folks who sued them knew darn well it was a frivolous suit, but they did it anyway. But again, that's almost impossible to do. So they're between a rock and a hard place. Speaker 6 (9:12) Another wrinkle in this story that I don't understand. is that Mayor Karen Bass is the one who's being blamed for this. And yes, the city, she was gone. She was in, I think, Chicago at the Obama library opening when all of this happened. But it's the county that's in charge of the Department of Public Health. This is a public health emergency that's going on in the county of Los Angeles. I wonder why Karen Bass isn't directing the blame at the county and is taking it herself. Speaker 4 (9:44) I think she really missed a bet. I mean, here she is in an environment where we now know if this Berkeley poll is right. She's in deep trouble against the DSA lady. She should have made it her business day one after this fire set off. She should have said, this is going to be a nightmare. The whole east part of Los Angeles is going to be a stinky mess. I'm on trial here, whether it's the county or the city, people are going to be looking to me. If she had said to her team, this is going to be like Pete Wilson reconstructing the 10 freeway after the earthquake in the 90s. I want it to be fast. I want it to be effective. I want to have all sorts of incentives. We've got to solve the problem so that in a month or so, I can go to the voters and say, guess what? I sunk my teeth into this real fast and we're making huge progress. And instead. I think she's getting no credit for it, probably because she hasn't done very much. And a lot of people are blaming her, saying, oh, but first you're at the Ghana inauguration doing the fire, and now you're missing an action when it comes to the stinky fire on East Los Angeles. We're not going to vote for you. Speaker 6 (10:46) We're speaking with ABC News legal analyst Royal Oaks, who