Car Dealership’s Decline Ignites Family Feud

THOUSAND OAKS — They were at the apex of Conejo Valley society--the former U.S. ambassador and his son, the president of the family-owned luxury automobile business.

Robert D. Nesen and his son Gary own homes in Ventura County’s most exclusive neighborhoods, the enclaves of Hidden Valley and North Ranch. Active in the growing cultural life of eastern Ventura County, they share a vacation getaway in Lake Arrowhead, and once ran cattle across a remote sweep of Oregon wilderness.

But today the family business is gone, swept away in a flood of red ink, and father and son have turned on each other. A half-dozen lawsuits separate 80-year-old Robert Nesen, who served four years as President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Australia, and the youngest of his three sons.

The lawyer for Nesen Motor Car Co. in Thousand Oaks, which is suing Gary Nesen for $2 million, claims that the younger Nesen lived lavishly at the company’s expense.

The son contends in a $10-million suit that Robert Nesen and others conspired against him. The suit charges that the elder Nesen concealed company debt so that Gary Nesen would sell the automobile business at the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall at a loss, forcing him into financial ruin.

Recuperating from gall bladder surgery, the elder Nesen declined comment about his strained familial relations, saying only, “I really don’t want to talk about that now.”

Cell phone in hand as he drove his black Suburban up to his palm-dotted North Ranch estate--on the market earlier this year for $3.5 million--Gary Nesen also demurred. He said ongoing settlement discussions prevent him from talking about the situation.

“I’m a nice guy,” he said, leaning out a lowered window. “I don’t want to take anybody’s money. I made my own money.”

As the ornamental wrought iron gates--decorated with a large letter N--rolled open, he said, “This is just sad. Unfortunate. I hope we’ll have it settled within the month.”

The Nesens’ attorneys also declined comment, saying only that the two men are trying to settle all the suits before the cases go to trial in the next few months.

“We’re trying to resolve everything, and I don’t want to inflame it,” said Los Angeles lawyer Skip Miller, who represents Gary Nesen.

For decades, the Nesens have been one of the Conejo Valley’s most prominent families, involved in civic and philanthropic affairs.

“What a shame,” said former Thousand Oaks Mayor Alex Fiore, who knows the Nesens through city business and repeated Oldsmobile purchases. “They’re too nice a people to be doing this.”

The lawsuits were filed in Ventura, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. They cover everything from Gary Nesen’s visits to Home Depot to outfit a tack room, to the details of the demise of a car business that was once Ventura County’s premier dealership.

Land Rovers, Rolls-Royces, Jaguars, Infinitis, Cadillacs and Hummers--the Nesen Motor Car Co. sold them all. In style.

Visitors to the Nesen showrooms gazed upon the bronze Western statues that Gary Nesen collected. Those buying sport utility vehicles at Nesen Hummer were surrounded by an exotic safari decor.

Court documents do not say when the company began to fail, but the various lawsuits agree on several points:

Nesen Motor Car Co. was incorporated in November 1987, a successor to a variety of Ventura County car dealerships owned by the Nesens. Gary Nesen ran the company as chairman, president and director. His father was not involved in the day-to-day operation, serving as chairman of the board. At its height in the early 1990s, the company boasted annual sales of $200 million and employed about 200 people.

In late 1995, the company staggered--debts outstripped assets and the Nesens lost their Infiniti franchise. Father and son sought out an investor or a person willing to purchase Nesen Motor Car Co., according to the court documents. John E. Anderson, a multimillionaire who owns the auto mall’s Silver Star Automotive Group, stepped forward.

Anderson’s corporations purchased the company’s assets for an undisclosed sum in November 1996.

“We were aware of the fact they were in financial difficulty, but the more we got into it, the more we realized the extent of the financial difficulty,” Anderson said in an interview.

“It was a wonderful franchise that was mistreated,” he continued. “If you abuse a company, you’re going to lose the company. When you spend more than you make, you’re not going to last very long.”

Here the lawsuits diverge:

* In an April 25, 1997, lawsuit against his father and two other people associated with the company, Gary Nesen contends that they presented him with “bogus” numbers as the deal was nearing completion, to convince him to sell at a loss. At the time, the lawsuit says, the company’s outstanding debts included two loans, one for $640,000 and another for $1.2 million.

During the closing, Gary Nesen alleges in the suit, he learned “for the first time that there would be a monetary shortfall.”

To entice him to sell, the suit contends, Robert Nesen promised to cover his son’s debts with the proceeds from the sale of his Oregon cattle ranch. The senior Nesen’s lawyers deny his son’s claims.

These alleged events occurred “with the specific intent to assist R.D. Nesen at Gary Nesen’s expense, and to destroy Gary Nesen financially in willful and conscious disregard of Gary Nesen’s rights,” the suit contends.

* The same day in April 1997, Robert Nesen’s lawyers filed a suit in San Bernardino County attempting to enforce a written agreement preventing Gary Nesen and his wife, Karla, from borrowing money against the vacation home at Lake Arrowhead.

* A different version of events is presented in a $2-million lawsuit filed July 3, 1997, in Ventura County Superior Court by Norman J. Hoffman, Nesen Motor Car Co.’s lawyer. It contends that Gary Nesen hid debt and took money from the company for personal use, allegations denied by the younger Nesen.

In 1996, while under Gary Nesen’s stewardship, “NMCC was operating at a loss, was experiencing severe financial difficulties, was unable to pay its debts timely as they matured [and] at numerous times was overdrawn on its various bank accounts,” the suit claims. The lawsuit further alleges that, when an outside financial review was conducted before the sale of the company, the auditor found more than $466,000 in disbursements to Gary Nesen.

Even after the sale, the suit continues, more than $1 million in company debt remained. What’s more, Gary Nesen allegedly owed the company an additional $880,000. With interest, that amount grew to $1.6 million.

* Subsequently, Gary Nesen filed a countersuit contending that his father had also drawn cash for personal use from the company, bartering cars worth $150,000 to $300,000 to laborers performing $1 million worth of work on Robert Nesen’s Hidden Valley ranch, Kentwood, just outside Thousand Oaks. The countersuit also contends that the elder Nesen used company money to buy cattle for the Oregon ranch, to pay his country club dues and membership at the Tower Club restaurant in Oxnard, and for salaries for his ranch foreman and housekeeper. The elder Nesen denies these allegations.

* On Sept. 21 of this year, Gary Nesen again sued his father, this time to block the sale of Kentwood. Nesen claims his father let him take possession of 20 acres on the ranch. The younger Nesen said he and his wife removed brush and debris, built a horse ring and a tack room and added fencing and a security system.

But things changed between him and his father, Gary Nesen said. First, his ailing mother, Delta Nesen, was placed in a nursing home, while her nurse continued to live at the ranch. Then the car company was sold.

“After that date, my father became very angry with me and has essentially stopped talking to me except through lawyers,” Gary Nesen said in a declaration attached to the Sept. 21 suit.

In his own declaration, Robert Nesen said he never promised his son the ranch, but did mention the possibility of giving him part of it, provided the elder Nesen could keep the tax benefits he was getting under the Williamson Act, a state law safeguarding farmland.

Friends say they aren’t sure how the Nesen family situation devolved so far. They quietly hope for a resolution.

Photographer Larry Janss grew up around the Nesen household and was close friends with son Randy, who died in 1989. Janss said he has nothing but respect and affection for the Nesen family, expressing particular admiration for Robert Nesen’s service to his country.

“I remember Delta as being very concerned about the children--she would scoot Randy and me out of the kitchen and make us peanut butter sandwiches,” Janss said. “She was this warm and loving presence. . . . I’m vastly disappointed that affairs between Gary and the ambassador have deteriorated to the extent that they apparently have.”