Vista theater-management company files for bankruptcy

By: SCOTT MARSHALL - Staff Writer | Wednesday, April 27, 2005 9:03 PM PDT ∞

VISTA ---- A Vista company that manages and operates several UltraStar Cinemas in San Diego County and elsewhere filed for bankruptcy earlier this month in the midst of a civil trial that ended with a $6.85 million verdict.

Vista-based Movie Theater Entertainment Group Inc., doing business as UltraStar Cinemas, sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 8 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Diego.

The petition for bankruptcy estimates the company has assets valued at $500,001 to $1 million and debts estimated between $1,000,001 and $10 million.

Geraldine Valdez, the attorney who filed the bankruptcy documents for the company, said the company is hoping to get a reorganization plan and does not envision closing any of the theaters it operates.

Valdez said Movie Theater Entertainment Group runs nine UltraStar Cinemas and theaters for other companies, which Valdez declined to identify.

The recent multimillion-dollar verdict against the company in a sexual harassment lawsuit involving four Poway girls who worked at an UltraStar Cinema in Poway was not the only reason for the bankruptcy filing, but will have to be considered in the reorganization plan, Valdez said.

The company filed for bankruptcy one day after a Superior Court jury decided Lindsay Marcisz, Maureen Hora, Jessica Pollastrini and Blair Pollastrini, who were 16 when they worked at the Poway theater, had been sexually harassed and awarded them a total of $850,000 for emotional distress.

Two weeks later, the same jury concluded a second phase of the trial by awarding the young women, now 19, $1.5 million each in punitive damages, for a total of $6 million, said John Dalton, one of the attorneys who represented the women.

"They were satisfied," Dalton said of his clients' reactions to the verdict. "What they were most satisfied with was that their story got out, that what happened to them was made public and was decided by a jury."

Dalton said after the attorneys obtain a formal judgment from the court as a result of the verdict, they will have to take it to the bankruptcy court and attempt to resolve the matter there. It could be years before the women receive what the jury awarded, Dalton said.

The women alleged in their lawsuit that the harassment included theater managers putting a retractable knife blade to the throats of two of the women, placing them in police-style restraint holds and inappropriately touching and leering at them.

In a document filed in bankruptcy court, attorneys for the women alleged that they also were subjected to "sexually charged language," "openly displayed pornography" and "threats of physical harm."

The two managers accused in the lawsuit of engaging in the harassing conduct, Dan Wooten and Adam Gustafson, reached an undisclosed settlement with the women before the case went to trial, attorneys in the case said.

Edward Chapin, who represented the company at the civil trial, said that his client is a small company that didn't have a lot of resources and didn't believe the alleged conduct was sexual harassment.

"Their position was that they felt that the conduct being alleged did not reach the level of sexual harassment under the law," Chapin said.

Dalton said one of the alleged incidents, in which the shoulder of one of the girls was dislocated, resulted in a criminal complaint, but the district attorney's office declined to file criminal charges.

Contact staff writer Scott Marshall at (760) 631-6623 or smarshall@nctimes.com.

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