The parents of the married couple with two infants killed in last year’s horrific West Portal crash have filed a second civil lawsuit against driver Mary Fong Lau. It accuses her of fraudulently transferring her real estate interests following the initial lawsuit to avoid paying damages to the victims’ families.
The victims, Matilde Ramos Pinto, 38, Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, 40, and their two children, 1-year-old Joaquin Ramos Pinto de Oliveira and 3-month-old Cauê Ramos Pinto de Oliveira, had been waiting in March 2024 for a bus to the zoo at the bus stop in front of the West Portal Branch library. All four were killed after Mary Fong Lau’s vehicle collided with the bus stop.
In June 2024, the couple’s parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Lau, who was also charged with four counts of felony vehicular manslaughter by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. Lau pleaded not guilty and was released on bail.
On Aug. 8, 2024, Lau transferred her ownership of three San Francisco properties — in the Sunset, Mission and Cow Hollow — to two limited liability companies named Sterling Haven Management LLC and Desert Canyon Ventures LLC, according to property records.
The victims’ families’ second lawsuit, originally filed April 21, claims that Lau declared under penalty of perjury that the transfers did not change the ownership structure, suggesting that she retained control through these entities.
“The fact that Lau essentially transferred the properties to herself, together with the timing of these transfers, which were recorded after Plaintiffs filed suit and the day before Lau served a motion to stay the Wrongful Death case, demonstrate Lau’s intent to hinder, delay, or defraud Plaintiffs as creditors,” reads the suit.
Attorneys who represent the victims’ families yesterday called Lau’s move “an intentional scheme” to “place assets beyond the reach of grieving families seeking justice” and “an attempt to avoid justice by fraudulent means.”
The victims’ relatives are seeking to reverse any real estate transfers Lau made after being criminally charged for the deaths of the family of four. The suit requests the court to void the property transfers, impose an injunction to prevent further transfers and compel disclosure of Lau’s trust interests and transactions.
After the transfer of the properties, the wrongful death lawsuit against Lau has been paused pending resolution of the criminal case, the victims’ relatives’ attorneys said in a press release. For the criminal case, the next court date is scheduled for July 17.
Glad to see ML continuing to follow this case.
Paralleling all the hard work and many articles that went into a single tech guy’s murder, would love to see even a single interview with people who knew this killer of a whole family: was she habitually careless? Showing signs of dementia? Is she still driving? Were there any previous speeding or other reckless driving citations? Taking a cue from CalMatters, what steps did the city or DMV take to prevent her from driving in the future?
Last year, drivers killed more San Franciscans (and way more random strangers) than non-vehicle killers. But you wouldn’t know it from the word count at ML.
Excuse me for pointing out that all those killed were not DELIBERATELY KILLED, unlike in cases of murder etc. There are ~millions of commuters in and through SF on every single day. Granted 40 or 50 fatal accidents is a lot to families of victims, statistically it’s not at all. “Vision Zero” was the name of the project to reduce them and despite millions wasted the trend goes the other way due to lack of SFPD enforcement and other factors. In this case, an elderly person was either confused or had a mechanical issue or both and the tragedy that ensued was awful – but remember how the SFMTA/Bicycle Lobby coalition tried to spin it? They made West Portal a mess of 1-ways and no-turns that does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to mitigate the situation involved in this loss of life. Truly sometimes very little can be done ahead of time and that’s the reality of a world of commuters, vehicles, and pedestrians. The way the situation has been abused is intolerably stupid and expensive to boot. As you note, MORE FATALITIES occur despite their green paint and bollard Millions wasted – why?
But more importantly to this story, (did you read it?) the Lau’s seem to be moving assets into LLC’s to avoid liability should she be found liable in the civil suit. That’s certainly shady business by someone who should know better, and not an accident. Somehow you failed to mention it in your slew of unanswered questions – my understanding from the reporting was that she misapplied the gas instead of the brake. DMV and road paint can’t stop all accidents, that’s reality, and we need to stop pretending that “Car killers!” are somehow more significantly dangerous now because of single-digit incidents like this. Take the anti-commuter anti-service-worker agenda out of the argument and look at what we can do that benefits all commutes. Anti-car vitriol is counter productive to any real discussion on the issue, obviously comparing it to “Killers!” is intended to evoke an emotional response rather than a rational one.
The Bicycle Influencer Coalition prefers emotional non-facts and thinks random 1-off accidents like the one in West Portal are good for their agenda to spend millions repaving SF streets to make non-bicycle commuters inconvenienced. This is literally their intended agenda as we’ve seen. If the city isn’t spending an inordinate amount of the budget on their whims, ignoring the actual issues and REAL safety concerns and problem locations in the process, they’re upset. Non-profit machinations require ever larger budgets and the only way to that is ever-larger exaggerations and misstatements of basic fact.
Wow that is a bad look
Are we really going to ruin some innocent old woman’s life because she murdered a family?
Multiple property owner, no less…