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FILE – Students walk on the Stanford University campus, March 14, 2019, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo\/Ben Margot, File)(Ben Margot \/ AP)<\/p>\nDallas real estate executive Jared Caplan believed he found the perfect franchise investment in 2015 in Home Care Assistance, an in-home healthcare service that catered to wealthier seniors, that would allow him to start, build and operate a small business under an internationally recognized, premium-branded company.<\/p>\n
Caplan claims he invested millions of dollars to make his franchise successful because of critical promises made to him personally and contractually by HCA\u2019s then-chief executive, Lily Sarafan, who is now the chair of the Stanford University board of trustees, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and on the boards of directors of Instacart and Thumbtack.<\/p>\n
FILE – Students walk on the Stanford University campus, March 14, 2019, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo\/Ben Margot, File)(Ben Margot \/ AP)<\/p>\n
But in a 22-page lawsuit filed July 17 in Dallas County, Caplan claims it was all a bait-and-switch scheme to defraud him of his investment of money and time.<\/p>\n
Business Briefing<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, Sarafan\u2019s personal success, at least in the last 10 years, has been built on fraud and preying on smaller investors such as Mr. Caplan,\u201d the lawsuit states. <\/p>\n
\u201cSarafan systemically misrepresented or obfuscated key facts to lure potential franchisees such as Mr. Caplan into investing their time, money, and reputation into expanding HCA\u2019s international network of revenue-generating offices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert Hernquist, a lawyer representing Sarafan, said he believes the court will dispose of Caplan\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor more than a year, Mr. Caplan has threatened to file baseless lawsuits against HCA and its former officers \u2014 including Ms. Sarafan \u2014 and to publicize those claims unless the company agreed to his demands to acquire his business,\u201d said Hernquist, who is a lawyer at Howard & Howard in Las Vegas. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are disappointed that Mr. Caplan has followed through on those threats and filed this vexatious lawsuit based on events that occurred more than a decade ago. Even worse, he has apparently made an effort to publicize his spurious lawsuit before Ms. Sarafan has even been served with the complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit claims that Sarafan convinced Caplan to invest $49,950 in acquiring an HCA franchise in 2015 and $64,950 in purchasing a second franchise in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter signing the franchise agreements, Mr. Caplan spent the last 10 years investing in and building one of, if not, the most successful in-home care businesses in the Dallas area,\u201d the lawsuit states. \u201cTo help build his business, Mr. Caplan took out more than $4 million in loans to grow his franchise based on the claims that Sarafan had made to him and the other potential HCA franchises.\u201d<\/p>\n
Court documents show that Caplan\u2019s franchises recorded $4.88 million in revenue in 2023.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for Caplan claim that Sarafan \u201csecretly built a competing corporate model to replace the HCA brand and franchising system\u201d to undermine the value of the existing HCA franchises. <\/p>\n
The lawsuit accuses Sarafan of fraudulent inducement, negligent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment by trying to force Caplan and other franchise owners to sell their operations back to HCA at greatly discounted prices, which Sarafan rebranded as TheKey. <\/p>\n
\u201cSarafan failed to disclose that, as part of the negotiations, Sarafan and [private equity firm] Summit Partners had already developed a plan to acquire an international network of offices at steeply discounted prices,\u201d the lawsuit states. \u201cSarafan and HCA would induce individuals into investing in HCA franchises and then, once the franchisees had incurred all the risks and costs associated with establishing new offices, HCA would force sale of the franchise back to HCA at artificially depreciated prices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnston Clem Gifford partner Kodie Bennion is representing Caplan.<\/p>\n
The Texas Lawbook is an online news publication focused on business law in Texas. For more on this and other legal news, visit texaslawbook.net.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas real estate executive Jared Caplan believed he found the perfect franchise investment in 2015 in Home Care…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":99859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,64,1596,4630,44284,358,11577,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-99858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-legal","12":"tag-real-estate-investment","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-the-texas-lawbook","15":"tag-tx","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114931933596860001","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}