According to a chamber of commerce website, the Catalina Island Yacht Club, founded in 1893, “is one of the oldest and most unique yacht clubs in Southern California” with “a rich history in the lore and tradition of the Island.”
But a lawsuit filed this month in Orange County Superior Court claims that the yacht club's board of directors is mired in a conspiracy and insider shenanigans masking improper sewage dumping, funny accounting and suspicious weapons possession.
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In the eight-page complaint, longtime yacht club member Timothy Beatty says he was a board member targeted for improper ouster by other insiders including Charles Boppell, V. Kelly York, Lowell Dreyrus, Tom Nix and Dave Horst.
“The individual board members named [in the lawsuit], plaintiff is informed and believes, decided to oust Beatty from the club because of his position that the club should be transparent with regard to the issues relating to the sewer discharge, should be forthcoming abut problems with the point of sale system and the club's accounting, and should comply with applicable law regarding employee's possession of weapons,” the Oct. 4 lawsuit, written by George C. Lazar, Beatty's San Diego-based attorney, states.
According to the complaint, Beatty–who owns Beatty N Company Computing, Inc. –believes other board members violated club bylaws by meeting in secret, conspired to remove him over the Labor Day weekend and committed defamation against him by spreading falsehoods.
The alleged falsehoods, which were not detailed in the lawsuit, unfairly tainted Beatty's reputation and caused damages greater than $25,000, according to the lawsuit.
Beatty's complaint also alleges that the Avalon club owes his company $165,000 for installation of a point of sale system and for “redoing” the club's accounting and inventory systems.
The defendants have not yet filed a formal response to the lawsuit that was assigned this week to Superior Court Judge Kirk Nakamura.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.