Trustee takes failed Old City Hall’s owner’s family to court
Gilroy – The parents of a failed downtown restaurateur are no more deserving of repayment than the two dozen creditors also waiting in line for money, according to a court-appointed bankruptcy referee for Old City Hall Restaurant.
Bankruptcy trustee Carol Wu alleged in a complaint filed last week that Ronald J. and Yolanda Gurries, the parents of former Old City Hall Restaurant owner Glen Gurries, exchanged $80,000 in cash and debt assistance for their son’s $300,000 stake in two family businesses. The complaint claims they also paid their son $16,000, after he filed for bankruptcy, to buy out his stake in a third business, the Yolanda and Ron Gurries Family Partnership.
Wu alleges that Gurries entered into the agreement with his parents with the “intent to hinder, delay or defraud creditors” of the restaurant, and that he failed to receive a “reasonable equivalent value in exchange for the transfers.”
The transfers, she claims, enabled his parents to receive more than they would have in the normal course of bankruptcy proceedings.
Gurries shuttered the doors of his up-scale restaurant at the corner of Sixth and Monterey streets in December 2004, leaving in his wake nearly $600,000 in debt and 26 creditors.
Ronald Gurries did not return a call for comment, and Glen Gurries did not respond to a request for comment left with his attorney.
The bankruptcy trustee is not limiting her search for assets to the former restaurateur and his family.
She has also filed a complaint to recover assets from Jim Angelopoulos, a Morgan Hill restaurateur who took over the old city hall lease from Gurries last year.
Wu has accused Angelopoulos of fraudulent assent transfers. She is demanding that he either return the lease and equipment inside the building or cough up $350,000 – the sale price agreed to with Gurries.
Angelopoulos has said most of the equipment in the building belongs to the city, and that Gurries failed to respond to multiple requests to pick up any equipment or fixtures he claims to own. He has claimed that Gurries’ failure to transfer a liquor license to the property nullified their deal.
Angelopoulos originally hoped to open “Chips ‘N Salsa,” a tropical Mexican restaurant, by June 2005. Legal wrangling delayed the opening until the beginning of 2006.
A pre-trial hearing is set for June in the Angelopoulos case, and a case management conference is set for Gurries’ parents in late July.
