Owner of XOXO Contractor in Dispute
George Arrington, one of the defendants named in the case brought by garment contractor workers against Los Angeles-based manufacturer XOXO last month, claims he has been erroneously identified as one of the owners of Martinez & Sons Sportswear, the contractor named in the suit.
“I was not the owner, I was an employee there and I haven’t been paid,” said Arrington. “I ran the place, I supervised everything, but XOXO can’t come after me for anything because I wasn’t the owner.”
Arrington said he was “in the process of taking over the factory” from owner Sonia Martinez when he signed the building’s lease on July 1 of this year, but the deal fell through before he could secure a garment registration certificate.
Arrington went on to say that the representatives of Labor Law, the City Of Commerce, Calif.-based contracting monitoring service employed by XOXO, could verify that he was not the legal owner.
However, Jesse Atilano, Labor Law president, denied any such knowledge.
“He’s lying,” Atilano said, refusing to comment further.
Arrington also said XOXO was “aware very early on that there were money problems,” adding that the contractor asked the manufacturer for help paying back payroll.
But Michael Novicoff, attorney for XOXO, dismissed Arrington’s claims that the manufacturer had any knowledge of labor violations early on as “completely untrue.”
The issue hinges on who was the legal owner of Martinez & Sons at the time of the labor violations.
“What we were told was that Sonia Martinez owned the company,” Novicoff said.“Our understanding of what went wrong is that she sold it to Arrington.”
Novicoff said that Martinez’s first lawyer had agreed to pay XOXO $8,400 of the $62,000 settlement last week, but later retracted the offer, claiming the responsibility was Arrington’s.
The determination of the legal owner of Martinez & Sons would have to be settled in court, Novicoff said, adding that XOXO would pursue Martinez and Arrington for settlement after the holidays.
Robert Chong, attorney for Sonia Martinez, said that Martinez & Sons was solely owned by Martinez, while Martinez Inc. was co-owned by the two. Chong declined to comment further due to ongoing litigation.
