Ah, the end of December. Time to tie up some loose ends on stories I've written in the past year. First, some New Year's debugging.
In September, I wrote about curious affairs involving America's best-known pest terminator, Orkin. The Atlanta-based company promises to inspect properties annually after treating them for termites. If more wood-eating vermin are found, Orkin vows (depending on the contract) either to re-treat the property or to repair any damage.
In a pesky swarm of litigation throughout the South, customers claimed that Orkin violated its pledges. Orkin's response was that the lawsuits represented isolated incidents. Even with several million-dollar-plus judgments, the company's $671 million in revenues last year ($36 million in profits) was hardly threatened.
That may change.
A Florida judge on Dec. 16 pinned a giant target on the red diamond Orkin emblem. The judge said there were sufficient facts to transform individual lawsuits into a "class action." Now, instead of customers seeking relatively minor sums to settle complaints, Orkin faces a bill that could run as high as $150 million.
The question that the Planet raised in our earlier report — and one that Orkin won't answer — is how did a company known for quality and integrity descend into activities that reflect the worst of corporate America?
For example, I disclosed internal Orkin memos where executives fretted that "fraud, theft and forgery" by company employees were getting out of hand. Depositions by ex-employees documented that properties weren't re-inspected, and thousands of customers' signatures were forged on re-inspection forms. More critical, in cases ranging from a Baptist church in the hamlet of Winton, N.C., to apartment houses in Tampa, to homeowners throughout the South, evidence supports claims that the company hid termite devastation from customers and, rather than repair damage, merely covered it up.
Orkin's new boss, Glen Rollins, gives every indication of wanting to clean up the nastiness that occurred under his father, Gary. In an October deposition, Gary Rollins essentially admitted many of the company's faults — but insisted policies and procedures were rectifying the problems. However, such reform has yet to extend to notifying customers that in the past they may have been scammed and victimized.
Now those customers are likely to get the word, despite Orkin's furious legal efforts to keep its disputes quiet. Floridians who have called the Orkin Man now will get letters from the Anti-Orkin Men — the lawyers who have won class-action status for their lawsuits.
In Tampa, state Circuit Court Judge Emmett Battles ruled that litigation brought by two homeowners qualified for class-action status. A conservative estimate contained in the judge's order is that 60,000 Florida customers are covered by the "class."
The lawyers who brought the action, Dan Clark of Tampa and David Oliver of Orlando, peg the number at closer to 100,000, a broad estimate that includes any Florida resident who signed or renewed a contract with Orkin since March 1995.
The Florida case contends that Orkin's alleged false advertising, misrepresentations and forgeries qualify the plaintiffs to seek treble damages under civil racketeering laws.
Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist also is probing Orkin's alleged racketeering.
"This is a company that still doesn't want to deal with the truth," attorney Clark says.
Orkin spokeswoman Martha Craft says the company will appeal. That has been Orkin's strategy — to doggedly drag unhappy customers through lengthy and expensive litigation. The Florida litigation already has gone through two appeals.
Orkin's propensity for, as Clark puts it, "all-out litigation war" appears to be backfiring. Orkin often prevails in disputes, but the company has lost verdicts as high as $2.3 million in a 1999 Alabama case and $2 million in a recent Jacksonville case. Now it faces class-action litigation that, in the Florida case, is seeking actual damages of $50 million and punitive damages of as much as $100 million more.
Looming next for Orkin is a similar fight in Georgia where former Gov. Roy Barnes is seeking class-action status for his clients.
For more on Orkin, see: www.weeklyplanet.com/2004-09-15/ cover.html.
FBI Bombers
In case you were wandering around the Florida wilderness recently and heard a mighty "ka-boom!" — it might have been FBI agent Kerry Myers blowing up a bus. Somehow, Myers' exercise in pyromania is supposed to be "evidence" in the terrorism case against Sami Al-Arian, the former University of South Florida professor who was indicted two years ago for terrorism. The Justice Department invited the Al-Arian defense team to witness the "bombing," tapes of which will apparently be used to show jurors what happens when a bomb destroys a bus.
This, then, must be the Justice Department's logic: Some Palestinians have blown up buses. Al-Arian is a Palestinian. Thus, he must be guilty of blowing up buses. Call it George Bush logic.
If that seems farfetched, keep in mind that we are talking about the Tampa office of the U.S. Justice Department, for which Myers was the lead Keystone Kop in the atrociously botched prosecutorial debacle of the famed Aisenberg missing-baby case. That case collapsed because the FBI misrepresented wiretap evidence, and lied to get a judge's permission to conduct the surveillance. Now the same agent wants folks to believe he has really juicy proof against Al-Arian on telephone intercepts.
When last we heard from Myers, the federales' case against Al-Arian was so thin, the FBI agent was demanding that I reveal my federal sources. He also leaned on me and other journalists (but only those who were skeptical about the prosecution of Al-Arian) to help the government prove Al-Arian had lied to the press when he said he wasn't connected to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Of course, the feds have conceded to the defense that they have no evidence Al-Arian had anything to do with the bombing, or any other bombing.
"They can't prove Sami provided or funded one bullet for an illegal act, or one bomb, or had any advance knowledge of any illegal act," says Al-Arian's Washington, D.C., attorney, Bill Moffitt.
That's been the case since federal agents raided Al-Arian's home and office in 1995. Moffitt is seeking to exclude evidence seized in the raid because agents failed to provide proof supporting their beliefs that Al-Arian had committed any crime.
Not having evidence doesn't deter the prosecution. In letters to the defense, the feds have stated that they don't need to prove that Al-Arian committed a crime. There are 14 terrorist actions cited in the indictment, and the prosecutors say they don't need to prove Al-Arian had any connection to those events. Nor, according to the prosecutors, do they have to prove money raised by Al-Arian went to bad guys.
And, finally, the feds contend that only violence against Israelis is at issue in the trial. Violence against Palestinians, the reasons behind the Palestinian resistance — even the fact that the government's own 2003 edition of Patterns of Global Terrorism states that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has not targeted America — is all "irrelevant."
In America, we get one side of the story. In Tampa, it's even worse because the Tribune from the beginning of this story has been a willing conduit for propaganda from a nest of far-right Likudnik political operatives in the United States, fronted by ersatz terrorism "expert" Steve Emerson.
The government's case will come down to scaring the jury and claiming Al-Arian is guilty because of what he believes and says, and who he associated with. That he likely committed no crime is, to the prosecutors, "irrelevant."
What the lawmen also will surely deride as irrelevant is the Justice Department's miserable record in catching real terrorists. After 9/11, more than 5,000 people were rounded up as suspected terrorists. Not one was convicted of a terrorist offense. What few convictions the Justice Department has scored have almost all been for minor, non-terrorism offenses. The median sentence for cases labeled "terrorist" is 14 days.
Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, did not respond to my questions for this article about the Al-Arian case.
Free America!
We enter the New Year with daily exposés of the widening torture scandal in Iraq, Guantanamo and Afghanistan. Government memos obtained by the ACLU disclose that war consigliore Donald Rumsfeld personally authorized the torture, and that White House occupant George Bush may have. Even the FBI was appalled at what it found Defense Department thugs were up to — crimes typical of Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro.
Meanwhile, the number of American soldiers killed and wounded increases at an accelerating pace. And the Pentagon won't let the piles of Iraqi civilians be tallied. The lies, first about the weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's ties to Al-Qaeda and now about the torture, haven't diminished.
And Bush & Co. still haven't caught Osama bin Laden.
Our nation has been shamed by its leaders. Our flag has been soiled.
Happy New Year. Impeach Bush.
This article appears in Dec 29, 2004 – Jan 4, 2005.
