BALTAZAR SALAZAR AND THE BISD'S UNDUE DILIGENCE

By Juan Montoya
It is March 2013.
The Brownsville Independent School District board of trustees has sent out Requests for Quotes (RFQ) to hire a new legal advisor for the district.
Among those who answered the BISD's RFQ is one Baltazar Salazar from Houston. In his cover letter, he plays the education and local card to the hilt.
"As a former classroom teacher and a product of the BISD, it is my distinct privilege to submit my proposal..."
After listing his background and qualifications, his narrative goes on to say – among other things – that he has "litigated on both sides of construction defect and insurance coverage cases for educational institutions..."
Further down in the narrative, in his backup to his litigation history, he cited his work on the American Standard and Trane Company vs. the BISD in the 357th District Court dealing with the construction defects and mold issues in an elementary and middle school. He lists the late Enrique Escobedo, BISD board president as his reference.
In the next citation, he lists his work on behalf of the BISD in the federal lawsuit brought against the Royal Surplus Lines Insurance Company dealing with the company's refusal to pay for the mold damage in both schools.
To make the long story short, the district was not able to collect on the insurance to pay claims against it by students at teachers at the schools mainly as a result of Salazar's feeble defense of the district.
Federal Judge Andrew Hanen minced no words about his view of BISD's legal representation at the very top of the June 2, 2005 order and memorandum granting the insurance carrier its motion for summary judgments.
"Before this Court are three motions for summary judgment filed by the plaintiff, Royal Surplus Lines Insurance Company (“Royal” or “Plaintiff”). Each will be discussed in greater detail below but, suffice it to say, each seeks a judgment that Royal is not liable to the defendant, Brownsville Independent School District (“BISD”), for damages suffered by BISD due to the presence of mold at two of its schools: Bruce Aiken Elementary School (“Aiken”) and Raul Besteiro Middle School(“Besteiro”). Despite warnings by the Court and a direct order setting a deadline, BISD has not filed a response to two of the three motions. Also, despite warnings from the Court, including an admonition to supplement its sole response, and the issuance of a firm deadline, the one response filed was not supplemented to provide the Court with any competent summary judgment evidence that raises an issue of material fact. That being the case, the Court hereby GRANTS all three of Royal’s summary judgment motions."
All this seemed lost on the BISD administration and the majority of the board of trustees (the late Escobedo, Otis Powers, Hector Chirinos and Minerva Peña) when they elected Salazar to represent the district on April 2013.
Only trustees Catalina Presas-Garcia and Lucy Longoria voted against Salazar and warn the rest of the trustees that there might be hell to pay down the road.
In his narrative about having "represented the Port of Brownsville in potential environmental claims for asbestos landfills, above-ground storage tanks, underground storage tanks, soil contamination and water contamination," he listed then-Port Chairman Mario Villarreal as his character reference.
That was news to Villarreal who denied that Salazar had been the port's attorney.
"He didn't do anything," Villarreal said when notified of the claims in Salazar's RFQ.
In fact, just this year, Villarreal filed a complaint against Salazar for failing to produce any results for which he hired the attorney two years ago even after he had taken a partial $3,500 payment promising to expunge the record of one of his relatives.
After two years, at least seven letters and 30 to 40 emails, Salazar failed to respond to any of them and had not informed Villarreal on the status of the case.
We have documented how Salazar failed to disclose on the application he filed with the district that he was trying to expunge three arrests and at least one felony conviction for theft ( a crime of moral turpitude) at the time that the board majority hired him as counsel.
However, even after a local court granted him the motion for expunction, an appeals court sided with the Texas Department of Public Safety and reversed the order.
That alone, according to the BISD's policy would have been enough to terminate his employment with the district. The policy states that: "a school district may terminate a contract with a person or business entity if the district determines that the person or business entity failed to give notice as required...or misrepresented the conduct resulting in the conviction..."
Just how thorough was the due diligence performed on Salazar by the BISD? Or was the support by Escobedo, Powers, Peña and Chirinos enough to bowl over any objections stated by the Human Resources staff?