THE REGISTRY TAKES ITS TRASH TO COURT

Look for things to get down and dirty as the legal battle drags on between the Dallas Registry-the alter ego of flamboyant Dallas hotelier Charles Lanphere-and Kraus-Ander-son Construction Co., the Minnesota contractor that built the $75 million hotel on Dallas Parkway. Nearly a year ago, Lanphere and his Dallas Registry Associates filed a $77 million lawsuit against Kraus-Anderson after the hotelier was presented a $10 million bill for cost overruns that the contractor claimed Lanphere himself authorized.

Last December, the contractor filed a motion alleging “serious charges of misconduct” on the part of Dallas Registry Associates. The serious misconduct: trash collection.

Testimony before U.S. Magistrate John B. Tolle at a hearing last January 19 revealed, however, that James E. Sharp, a Washington, D.C., attorney retained in the lawsuit by Lan-phere, had hired private investigators to conduct a “trash cover” operation-that is, picking up plastic bags containing trash-from a dumpster adjacent to Kraus-Anderson’s Dallas offices on Coit Road near Forest Lane.

In addition, testimony established that on several occasions, the private investigators also collected trash from garbage cans near the Tyler office of Thomas M. Frisby, an expert witness retained by Kraus-Anderson, and at the home of Fred Warren, an Austin-based Kraus-Anderson executive.

Tolle, in an order he issued last February, ruled that the collection of the trash did not constitute illegal or unethical conduct, since the private investigators did not trespass and the trash was considered “abandoned property.” (Legal precedents for trash cover operations have already been set by the U.S. government, whose narcotics investigations often include collecting the trash of suspected drug dealers.) Tolle also ruled that the trash was “attorney work product” (confidential material) but that the Kraus-Anderson attorneys were not entitled to copies of the documents picked up in the trash cover since they have failed to show “substantial need or undue hardship” as required by federal rules of civil procedure. Attorneys for Kraus-Anderson have appealed the latter portion of Tolle’s ruling.

Meanwhile, Kraus-Anderson attorneys are in the midst of legal maneuvering to get their hands on the nine boxes of “trash” currently under the protective arm of a federal judge. The contractor’s attorneys are also attempting to corner Lanphere to take his deposition, another potentially explosive event that isn’t expected to occur before mid-July.