Sacramento real estate company owner faces fourth lawsuit alleging sex assault
Ethan G. Conrad, the head of a prominent Northern California real estate company, now faces a fourth civil lawsuit in Sacramento County filed by a woman accusing him of sexual assault.
This time, the woman accusing Conrad is a business partner who alleges he raped her during a July 2011 meeting intended to discuss a potential sale of residential properties.
The attorney representing the woman, identified in filed court documents as “Jane Smith,” argues that his client was in a serious romantic relationship with someone else at the time and had no intentions of having a consensual romantic or physical encounter with Conrad, and she believes her champagne was spiked with a drug.
“Jane Smith is now certain the champagne was laced with what must have been a date rape type of drug or substance,” Fair Oaks-based attorney John Garner said in the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Sacramento Superior Court. “Jane Smith partook sparingly, exercising deliberate restraint in her consumption to preserve her mental clarity for the pivotal negotiations which were her primary focus.”
In response to the latest lawsuit filed against him, Conrad said in a email that “there’s no truth to any of the allegations of me doing any wrongdoing, and this is yet another extortion attempt.” And he denied the allegations in the three other sexual misconduct lawsuits filed against him in the past several months.
“We are proceeding forward with all action and defenses against these plaintiffs and their attorneys for their lawsuits against me with knowingly false information in them,” Conrad told The Sacramento Bee on Friday.
Conrad’s Sacramento-based company, Ethan Conrad Properties, has properties across the region, including the Renaissance Tower, one of Sacramento’s tallest buildings, which he won with a $21 million auction bid in October. The company’s blue-and-yellow real estate signs mark property it owns.
On April 3, Conrad’s legal team filed a countersuit alleging that one of the women accusing him of sexually assault of illegally recorded him in private conversations. The woman in that lawsuit, identified as “Jamie Doe” in court documents was seeking a job with Conrad’s company early last year, and her Jan. 6 lawsuit alleges Conrad committed sexual battery and sexual harassment.
Another woman he met online alleges he sexually assaulted her at his home, and a woman he was in a relationship with alleges Conrad was abusive and attacked her when she questioned him about sexual encounters he had with other women.
“The only thing I will say is that as more information comes out on these three cases, you and everyone else will see that definitively there’s no validity at all to any of the allegations which are all simply extortion attempts which will fail,” Conrad said Tuesday in an email to The Bee responding to a request for a comment on his April 3 countersuit.
The Sacramento Business Journal was the first on Thursday to report news about fourth sexual misconduct lawsuit filed against Conrad.
In Jane Smith’s lawsuit against Conrad, her attorney alleges Conrad is in breach of partnership agreement and fiduciary duty as a result of sexual assault of his business partner and ongoing misconduct, along with a dissolution of the business partnership.
2011 business meeting
Jane Smith’s business partnership with Conrad’s company began in May 2008, an agreement in which she identified, analyzed and acquired residential properties in foreclosure status for Conrad’s company. These homes would be renovated and then used as rental properties, according to her lawsuit. She was then entitled to a return on her capital investment and professional efforts, calculated as a percentage of the net proceeds from property sales or rental income.
On July 21, 2011, Jane Smith attended “a critical business meeting” with Conrad to negotiate future terms relating to their residential property portfolio, her attorney said in the lawsuit. This meeting was intended to focus on 20 residential properties that Jane Smith acquired in 2008 to renovate and resell for profit.
Jane Smith’s attorney said in the lawsuit that Conrad “adamantly advocated” to retain these properties as rentals for 18 to 24 months following their staging and listing for sale in 2008. Jane Smith had not yet received any financial returns on these investments.
Jane Smith agreed to meet with Conrad for a scheduled dinner meeting at his favorite downtown Sacramento restaurant to discuss the properties, her attorney argued in the lawsuit, “not expecting she would become the victim of a sexual attack.”
Garner argued that Conrad was aware the following day was Jane Smith’s birthday, which prompted him to order champagne to celebrate. The attorney said in the lawsuit that Jane Smith — during a car ride to Conrad’s home — “experienced an alarming and sudden onset of extreme dizziness entirely inconsistent with and disproportionate to the amount of champagne” she drank that night.
The lawsuit alleges they arrived at Conrad’s home, and she reclined on a couch to regain her composure but lost all recollection of subsequent events. Her attorney called it “a stark indication of a grave and sinister occurrence.”
On the following morning, Jane Smith awoke “in a profoundly disoriented state” with symptoms akin to being tranquilized, her attorney said. The disturbing condition strongly suggested she was a victim of sexual assault while incapacitated and unable to consent, Garner argued in the lawsuit, and she immediately told her assistant about the traumatic event.
Fearing sexually transmitted diseases, Jane Smith scheduled the earliest appointment with her obstetrician-gynecologist. Her attorney said she was further distressed she discovered tampons forcibly inserted, some of which remained undetected for at least a week. Garner argued this was a “irrefutable testament to her unconscious state during the assault and her complete lack of intent or capacity to engage in sexual activity.”
Leaving a tampon in for a long time can lead to toxic shock syndrome. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, toxic shock syndrome is rare and is caused by a toxic substance that is produced by certain kinds of bacteria and result in organ damage, including kidney, heart, and liver failure, shock or even death.
“Overwhelmed by shame and fearing professional repercussions, Jane Smith withheld the full extent of the rape from her physician, while grappling with profound anxiety over how this violation might jeopardize her partnership agreement concerning the 20 rental properties she owned in partnership with Ethan Conrad,” her attorney said in the lawsuit.
Garner said his client suffered widespread bruising across her body and persistent pelvic pain that lasted about two months.
“The severity of this violent attack, executed with apparent premeditation and disregard for her autonomy, inflicted deep physical, emotional, and professional wounds, the ramifications of which reverberate to this day,” Jane Smith’s attorney said in the lawsuit.
Prominent in Northern California real estate
In December, Conrad’s company closed escrow on the purchase of the 28-story Renaissance Tower office building in downtown Sacramento. With the addition of the high rise, Ethan Conrad Properties controlled roughly 600,000 square feet of office and retail space within a single block including buildings at 630 K St. and 770 L St.
“Mr. Conrad is a well-established businessman in Sacramento. As a major figure in the region’s real estate industry, Mr. Conrad is known to be a man of significant financial means,” Camille Vasquez argued in the countersuit against Jamie Doe. “In other words, he is the perfect target for a predator like Jamie Doe.”
Vasquez and Samuel Moniz, another member of Conrad’s legal defense team, were among the attorneys who represented movie star Johnny Depp who sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for defamation. Vasquez and Moniz were part of Depp’s five-lawyer trial team who were all hired as partners in August by Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP, the law firm Conrad hired earlier this year to defend him in the sexual battery lawsuits filed by the three women.
