Parking lot mogul Diamond dies at 99

SEATTLE – Josef “Joe” Diamond, a parking lot magnate and lawyer who argued a major discrimination case at the U.S. Supreme Court, has died. He was 99.

Relatives said Diamond died at home in his sleep Saturday, three days before his 100th birthday. Services were held Monday. Diamond was born in 1907 in Los Angeles, the fourth child of Jewish parents who fled czarist Russia. The family moved to Seattle when Diamond was 2. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1928 and earned his law degree from UW in 1931. Diamond served in the Army judge advocate general’s office for four years during World War II.

After the war, Diamond and his brothers Leon and Louis took over a service station and parking business.

Faced with a dwindling number of lots and attendants, the Diamonds devised a self-pay box that became familiar around the country.

Diamond Parking Inc. remains a family business, operating more than 1,000 parking lots and other facilities in eight states and Canada.

Diamond Parking sometimes attracted negative publicity for its tactics, including chaining 50-gallon barrels to cars that didn’t pay parking fees. But Ken Phillips Sr., of the rival U-Park System, said Joe Diamond didn’t deserve a bad reputation.

“Joe had all the ethics in the world as far as I’m concerned,” Phillips told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

As a lawyer, Diamond’s most famous case involved a discrimination claim by a UW student, Marco DeFunis, who challenged the law school’s policy of accepting minority applicants over white applicants with better grades.

Diamond argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974. DeFunis ended up earning his law degree because of the lawsuit, but Diamond was unable to convert the case to a class action.