In the last issue of the Burbank Leader, it was reported that on Nov. 7, the Superior Court of Los Angeles dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Burbank city attorney’s office against the former owners of the Tinhorn Flats Saloon, with the judge ruling their case “moot” without merit and barred the Tinhorn Flats Saloon owners from obtaining a future business license. This is useless because the owners have already sold the property where their saloon was operated and have no plans to open another such business.
What the city attorney’s office has never explained, however, is why their lawsuit against the Tinhorn Flats Saloon owners did not include the demand for financial compensation of taxpayers’ money for what is estimated to be more than $250,000 in extra law enforcement and court costs during their 2020 and 2021 continual lawbreaking and flouting of court orders.
Noticeably absent from both the criminal and civil cases against the Tinhorn Flats Saloon this year has been principle owner Baret Lepejian, who moved permanently in 2019 to Thailand, where he regularly used social media and YouTube to urge his family to continue breaking Burbank laws and L.A. County Health Department regulations while using the controversy to gain a reported $94,000 in donations from his local sympathetic supporters on GoFundMe, as well as an estimated $45,000 from government COVID-19 business relief funds.
From Baret’s safe space in Thailand, he continues to laughingly avoid responsibility for all the chaos and expenses he’s cost the Burbank community.
Doug Weiskopf
Burbank
First published in the December 16 print issue of the Burbank Leader.
