Following a five-week trial in a civil lawsuit, the jury found that the manager of a local thrift, through undo influence, defrauded the estate of an 82-year-old customer who died of Alzheimer's disease.
The Santa Clara County Superior Court jury last Thursday assessed damages of $99,000 against Los Altos resident Mark Asplund, 36, who is manager of the Loyola Corners branch of Downey Savings and Loan. The jury also assessed $10,000 in damages against his wife, Kathy Asplund, who had been manager of the branch before her husband.
The jury did not hold Downey responsible for its manager's behavior. The jury found that Asplund did not act with malice or recklessness.
Friends continue to offer support to the Asplunds.
"I stand by my original position that Mark and Kathy are innocent and stand by to help them rebuild their lives," said their minister, Brian Morgan, also a Los Altos resident.
The trial grew out of a lawsuit filed four years ago and included a $10 million claim against Downey. The Asplunds filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy in January. Lacking the money for an attorney, Mark Asplund represented himself.
"To have a $10 million lawsuit reduced to $109,000 with Mark defending himself, I'm pretty proud of him," Morgan said. "It's brought a lot of people together to stand by him, to walk down that road with him."
The lawsuit resulted from of the Asplunds' relationship with Terry Mosher, a bank customer, who died in 1995. The autopsy confirmed that the 82-year-old widow died of Alzheimer's disease and liver damage from alcohol.
Mosher's husband had died in November 1992. In July 1993 she moved a $294,000 Downey account to another institution with the Asplunds as joint tenants with rights of survivorship.
Between 1993 and June 1994, before the county stepped in and set up a conservatorship for Mosher, $199,000 in gifts were transferred out of Mosher's estate, said Denis O'Neal, an attorney with the Santa Clara County public guardian/public administrator's office.
Each of Asplund's three children received $10,000; each of Asplund's parents received $10,000; four of Mosher's neighbors each received $10,000; $41,000 of Asplund's credit card debt was paid off; and Asplund received a new $22,000 truck, O'Neal said.
"These were gifts from her (Mosher) to his family by her own free will," Morgan said.
According to friends and witnesses, Mosher and the Asplunds were good friends, with the Asplund children calling Mosher "Grandma Terry."
Terry Mosher "was not an alcoholic," Morgan said. And "she was not exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's when they knew her."
According to O'Neal, the jury was unable to find Downey liable because the California elder fraud law focuses more on paid caretakers or family members, not on financial institutions. County officials said they are considering asking the legislature to change the law so that financial institutions can be held responsible if employees violate elder care laws.
"Bank managers should not accept large gifts from elderly customers," O'Neal said. "If that's not the law today, it should be."
What began as a $1.1 million estate of blue chip stocks, cash and a house, has been depleted to include only the Mosher house, O'Neal said.
The Asplunds could not be reached for comment last week.
Asplund had been on a personal leave from Downey since January. The Asplunds declined to comment.