Cory Briggs. Dead people have rights, too, you know.

Cory Briggs. Dead people have rights, too, you know.

Although CATER gets the credit – if that’s what you want to call it — for the lawsuit that spiked a deal with Citigroup for bond financing of the Anaheim Convention Center expansion, the loud little group is actually a co-plaintiff. The other plaintiff is the Inland Oversight Committee (IOC).

The IOC is a creature of left-wing attorney Cory Briggs, the left-wing attorney from San Diego who is OCCORD’s attorney in their lawsuit against the 2013 GardenWalk agreement. It is a tiny non-profit that has been filing lawsuits against economic development projects in San Diego and the Inland Empire. Indeed, the more you look at it, the more CATER seems to have been modeled on it.

The late Ian Trowbridge. Proof of litigation after death.

The late Ian Trowbridge. Proof of litigation after death.

Like CATER, IOC claims to represent a group of citizens but keeps that claimed membership anonymous. How ‘real” a group is the IOC? Consider the following and draw your own conclusion: the auhor of this July 2, 2013 post on the Empoprise-IE blog was researching IOC and discovered that the person listed on IOC’s website as it’s chairman had actually died several months earlier.

I’ve heard of dead people voting, but not suing.

CATER and IOC being co-plaintiffs against Anaheim is actually quasi-karmic: CATER President Cynthia Ward is a trustee of the OC Cemetery District, and IOC used to be headed by a dead person.

The IOC website currently lists as its chairman someone named “SD Fraker” – who presumably is still among the living, but who really knows? It also lists as its “Legal Advisor” a Mr. Anthony Kim – an attorney in Brigg’s law firm.