Diamond Daughter Sues Kin Over Trust -- She Claims Relatives Mismanaged Assets

A multimillion-dollar feud in one of Seattle's most famous families spilled into court this week when the daughter of parking-lot czar Josef Diamond sued her father and brother, saying they are squandering the family's assets.

Diane Diamond Foreman claims she has been denied access to, and proceeds from, a $30 million trust established when her mother, Violett Diamond, died in 1979.

She also says her brother, Joel Diamond, mismanaged the trust and appropriated "exorbitant" compensations for himself while carrying out questionable business deals that profited him at the trust's expense.

The suit, filed in King County Superior Court, claims such action will prevent Diane Foreman "from ever receiving an equal share of the Trust estate as her mother intended."

And it contends that Diane's and Joel's father, Josef Diamond, was involved in the action, while conducting business that benefited him rather than the Diamond Parking trust.

Josef Diamond, 88, did not return phone calls yesterday, but friends rallied in his defense. Longtime acquaintance and attorney Ron Neubauer called the situation "miserable" and could not imagine that Josef Diamond "would harm anyone, much less his own children."

Paul Cessman Sr., an attorney representing Joel Diamond, echoed that sentiment and "vehemently" denied the charges.

"We are confident the evidence will show that father and son have been exceptionally good managers of this trust," he said. "The company has more than 1,000 employees, and since 1979 (the year Violett died), the company's growth rate equals the Dow Jones industrial stock growth rate."

Cressman said Diane Foreman has worked for the company on two different occasions and was involved in managing the trust, and that her husband, former Bellevue Mayor Richard Foreman, was once a company director.

"If she needed anything, all she had to do is ask for it," said Cressman.

Company started in 1922

The trust owns 92 percent of Diamond Parking Inc., a company with vast real-estate holdings. It operates about 700 parking lots in nine states, including 200 in Seattle.

Considered the nation's oldest parking-lot company, it got its start in 1922 when Josef's brother, Louis, opened a car-repair shop in downtown Seattle, near a medical building. The doctors and dentists paid to have their cars serviced, and soon anted up a daily fee to leave their cars on the lot. Thus was born a business that has become a household word throughout the Puget Sound area.

Josef Diamond took over in 1946, after serving in the Army in World War II. His innovations included the industry's first self-park system - and the first methods for detaining deadbeat parkers. For a time, nonpaying cars were towed, but that expensive approach was replaced by parking attendants who carried wrenches and screwdrivers to disconnect battery cables.

Josef Diamond also acquired considerable downtown property, including The Terminal Sales Building, the Diamond Building, Electric City Building and a Boren Avenue dance hall.

Revenue down, daughter says

Violett Diamond was not heavily involved in the family business, but community-property laws entitled her to its assets - which became the subject of her 1979 will, and of the feud between her two children, Diane and Joel.

Joel Diamond became Diamond Parking's president in 1970.

Diane, who runs a development and investment company called Columbia West Properties, said she first suspected irregularities when she took over management of the Terminal Sales Building about a year and a half ago. In September, she started hiring attorneys and accountants to investigate.

In a Sept. 1 letter to Josef and Joel Diamond, her attorney, Kenneth Schubert, suggested that the company's gross revenues and market share had declined by almost half in the last several years.

"While Diamond Parking has suffered severe setbacks," he wrote, "Joel drew out over half a million dollars in annual compensation."

Negotiations sputtered in the months following, culminating in this week's lawsuit against Joel and Josef Diamond and the trust's co-trustee, Jerome Alhadeff, a member of another well-known Seattle family.

Joel Diamond was in Spokane and not available for comment. Cressman, his attorney, said the company had not lost unreasonable amounts of money, and any suggestion that Joel Diamond was siphoning money from the trust was wrong and unjust.

Diane Diamond has hired a public-relations specialist and says the suit was a last-ditch effort to resolve a difficult situation.

"I'm really sorry it had to come to all this," she said. "I remain hopeful we can settle our differences."