Pizza Huts close doors indefinitely By AARON CLAVERIE, Staff Writer
Saturday, May 29, 2004 11:01 PM PDT
The Valley's Pizza Hut restaurants in El Centro, Brawley and Calexico were closed Friday and Saturday and might be closed for a while.
The owner/franchisee of the restaurants, RLLW Inc. of Las Vegas, has been accused by the San Diego County District Attorney's Office of operating without workers' compensation insurance from July 3-17.
The DA's Office claims RLLW Inc. failed to secure insurance for those 15 days, which translates into 15 misdemeanor counts.
If convicted on all 15 counts, the maximum sentence for the owners, Jackie Lee Robinson and Michael Kevin Loyd, is one year in prison for each count.
Robinson and Loyd were basketball stars at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the late 1970s. Robinson was drafted in the fourth round of the 1978 NBA draft by the Houston Rockets and had a brief NBA career.
About 70 percent of Dallas-based Pizza Hut's restaurants are franchises, according to spokeswoman Patty Sullivan. She said Pizza Hut Inc. cannot step in and reopen the restaurants.
"It's a franchise issue," she said.
Dominic Dugo, chief of the San Diego County DA's Office fraud division, said his office did not shut down the restaurants. If the owners have workers' compensation insurance, the restaurants can reopen, he said.
The arraignment date on the complaint is June 17.
The San Diego DA's Office hit RLLW Inc. with an unrelated complaint in May. That complaint accused the franchisee of charging a 50-cent energy surcharge without explaining the charge to customers.
The lawyer who represented RLLW in that case, Dan Ayala of Las Vegas, was unavailable for comment Friday, according to a staffer at his office.
An employee at Papa John's Pizza in El Centro said business was a little better than normal on Friday night but he didn't notice a big spike in sales.
At Peter Piper Pizza in Calexico, an employee said the restaurant was as busy as normal on Saturday afternoon.
Calls to the local Pizza Huts were not answered.
There is no listing for an RLLW Inc. in the Las Vegas area, according to a directory assistance operator. The company, with 2,200 employees, is one of the top black-owned businesses according to BlackEnterprise.com.
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