County: Businessman tried to deceive officials

Stephen Curran

Monday, June 6, 2005 | 9:39 a.m.

Raymond Young created a company to confuse county Aviation Department officials with whom he was working to develop an airport in Ivanpah Valley, attorneys for the county argued Friday.

Young, an engineer and businessman whose firm is now suing the county for allegedly stealing ideas from the company's study of the proposed airport, testified that he purposefully changed his firm's name from HDG Inc. to Hamilton Development Group to allow him to continue using a logo that contained the firm's initials.

It was a last-ditch scheme by Young, 63, to horn in on a project that continues to roll forward without him, Peter Bernhard, an attorney defending the county, said.

"From the very beginning you knew the Department of Aviation was going forward with this project, whether you were involved or not,' Bernhard said.

The name change was forced after Young lost the financial backing of his sole investor, French engineering consultant Dumez-GTM, in January 2000, Young said.

County lawyers have argued that Young's firm presented an idea for a massive air cargo hub of little interest to county officials, who had set their sights on a publicly financed passenger facility. At issue now is a memorandum of understanding signed in 1997 to work together on the project. The five-year memorandum formed an agreement for the two entities to work together but differed from a legally binding contract, county officials have said.

The county severed the agreement a year early because they were not promptly told of Dumez's departure from the project, which Bernhard argued was evidenced by the two similar names for Young's company. Young testified the county was not directly notified, but that he filed the necessary "fictitious business statement," a public document that catalogs the name change.

Young's company sued the county in June 2002 for unjust enrichment, breach of contract, intentional and negligent misrepresentation.

District Judge Mark Denton dismissed all but one claim -- that of unjust enrichment -- in October. A jury of eight women and three men will now decide whether the county owes Young any money.

Dumez, who Young has said pulled out after a disastrous meeting in July 2001 with Aviation Director Randy Walker, contributed $1.4 million to Young, half of which he used to conduct the now-disputed feasibility study. Walker and other county officials have since used information from within that study to drum up support locally and in Washington, D.C., for the project without paying Young, his lawyers, J. Randall Jones and William Coulthard, have said.

"The MOU was a statement of intent and it showed the intent of all parties,' Young testified. "I believed we were working as partners.'

Young, who on Thursday described Walker as an "arrogant civil servant,' claims the abrupt ending to his company's relationship with the county ruined him professionally and financially because other would-be investors balked at future business dealings with Young.

Walker had suggested that, for a public-private partnership to work, Young's firm would have to front more than $60 million, a sudden announcement that effectively ended their relationship, Young said.

"We were thrown out of his office, figuratively,' Young said. "The $60 million wasn't the issue. It was the way he threw it on the floor as a kind of challenge.'

Bernhard, who repeatedly pointed to four $5,000 checks Young wrote himself as payment in October 1997, said the Princeton-educated engineer and former undersecretary of the federal Transportation Department was trying to line up investors who would foot the bill for the potentially lucrative project while putting up virtually none of his own money.

"You didn't have the money, did you?' Bernhard asked of Young's ability to fund additional phases of the study.

Young testified Wednesday that he had mortgaged his New York home and had taken roughly $200,000 in advances in his inheritance to finance the project, although a financial aid form filed on behalf of his college-age sons in March 2000 and shown in court Friday listed his personal assets at $7,000.

Young had relied on college friend and business partner Roger Anderson, himself a multimillionaire, for free space in his White Plains, N.Y., office, Young said. Like Young, Anderson was paid by Dumez while the feasibility study was being conducted.

According to a county voter registration database, Young lives in an apartment on West Tropicana Avenue. He testified on Wednesday that, while his firm still exists, he is pursuing a doctorate at UNLV and plans to teach.