Diamond Parking Family Feuds

A family feud over management of a $30 million trust fund that owns 92 percent of Diamond Parking Inc. has moved to the courts.

Diamond Parking operates about 700 parking lots in nine states, including 200 in Seattle.

The company, considered the nation’s oldest parking-lot company, also owns considerable Spokane property, including most downtown surface lots, a Riverfront Park lot and an airport shuttle lot.

Diane Diamond Foreman, has sued her father, Josef Diamond, and brother, Joel, in King County Superior Court. She claims her brother, president of Diamond Parking Inc., has mismanaged a $30 million trust and taken “exorbitant” amounts for himself in questionable business deals.

She said her father’s involvement includes conducting business that benefited him rather than the trust.

Negotiations to resolve the dispute had sputtered in recent months, so Foreman said she filed the suit as a last-ditch effort.

An attorney representing Joel Diamond denied the charges.

“We are confident the evidence will show that father and son have been exceptionally good managers of this trust,” said attorney Paul Cressman Sr. “The company has more than 1,000 employees, and since 1979, the company’s growth rate equals the Dow Jones industrial stock growth rate.”

The suit said Foreman has been denied access to and proceeds from the trust, which was established when her mother, Violett Diamond, died in 1979.

Foreman said she first suspected irregularities 18 months ago when she took over management of the Terminal Sales Building in Seattle.

In September, she hired attorneys and accountants to investigate.

Her attorney, Kenneth Schubert, has suggested that the company’s gross revenues and market share declined by almost half in the last several years.

“While Diamond Parking has suffered severe setbacks, Joel drew out over half a million dollars in annual compensation,” Schubert wrote in a letter to Josef and Joel Diamond.