Myra Nishizaki’s suit against Ideal Living was the one proceeding that could have tested, in public, what she said about the company and the temple. By contract, it never could. Six filings show what she alleged, how the company answered, and how it ended.
Twenty-five days before Peter Spiegel, Katie Williams and Ideal Living sued David Najar for extortion, Myra Nishizaki sued them. Her complaint, filed September 1, 2023 in the same Van Nuys courthouse, named the company, Spiegel and its human-resources director, and put in writing the allegations that the extortion case would later be built to keep from a jury. It was also the one proceeding in which those allegations could have been tested on evidence, with witnesses under oath and a public record. It never was, and the reason is a document she signed on her second day at the company.
The complaint pleads six counts: wrongful termination in violation of public policy, religious discrimination, whistleblower retaliation, failure to prevent discrimination, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. All six rest on a short set of facts. Nishizaki joined Ideal Living in March 2019 as a senior brand manager. In February 2023 she raised with her superiors what the complaint calls “financial ties between the company and its founder defendant SPIEGEL’s religious organization, with which the company’s most senior management personnel held leadership roles.” Those ties, she alleged, made her suspect the company “was illegally avoiding income tax liability,” and her own research turned up “a record of allegations” that the organization “was involved in the sexual abuse of minors.” The company, she alleged, hired people from the organization “who were not qualified for their positions,” put one of them over her for an extended period, and gave employees from the organization “free housing and substantially higher salaries for the purpose of facilitating donations to the religious organization.”
The chronology takes three days. On February 7, 2023 she put her concerns to Spiegel in person, and he “responded by proposing a severance package,” which the complaint treats as notice that he meant to fire her. On February 8 she sent a written complaint to the human-resources director, Carlton Newsome. On February 9 she was terminated, and that day, she alleges, Newsome sent an email to the whole company, at Spiegel’s direction, accusing her of “making false and unfounded statements.” That email is the entire basis of the defamation count, which with the emotional-distress claim is the only part of the case that names Spiegel and Newsome personally.
What the complaint leaves out is as telling as what it pleads. It never mentions Najar, the confrontation in Spiegel’s office, or any sum of money. Her own email of February 8, which Spiegel later filed as an exhibit, had asked for an “exit package” proposal by that Friday morning; at her deposition she testified that Spiegel “suggested an exit package” and “asked me for a number,” and that she gave none. Spiegel’s two accounts each supply a number for her, “the company’s worth” in the police report and “tens of millions of dollars” in his declaration. The complaint also says she received a right-to-sue letter from the state civil-rights agency, on a date left blank, and that the letter is attached. It is not.
Ideal Living never filed an answer. Thirty-eight days after the complaint it petitioned to move the case to arbitration, and Spiegel verified the petition under penalty of perjury as “Co-CEO of Defendant Ideal Living Management, LLC.” His signature does two things. It makes paragraph 6 of the petition his earliest sworn account of February 7, 2023, given eight months after the fact and sixteen months before his declaration in the extortion case. After his meeting with Nishizaki, it says, “Nishizaki’s boyfriend, David Najar, trespassed into Ideal Living’s headquarters and confronted Mr. Spiegel,” threatened “to physically harm Mr. Spiegel and release false and defamatory statements” about him, Williams and the company “if Mr. Spiegel did not agree to pay millions of dollars,” and had since “insinuated in multiple instances and in a variety of ways that he has been stalking Mr. Spiegel and Ms. Williams in their private residence.” And it identifies the employer. Nishizaki worked for Ideal Living Management, LLC, which does business as Ideal Living and which Spiegel runs as co-chief executive. The plaintiff in the extortion case is Ideal Living, LLC, described in that complaint as a Delaware company. One trade name, two entities, the same man signing for both.
The brief attached to the petition, written by the company’s lawyers and not sworn, argued that her case and the Najar case had nothing to do with each other. Najar “is not even referenced in Plaintiff’s lawsuit”; the Najar litigation “concerns conduct that entirely post-date Nishizaki’s termination”; “neither the time periods nor the actors match up.” Sixteen months later Spiegel’s own declaration said the opposite. The anonymous emails, it swears, began “shortly after a call between the lawyers in that action,” meaning hers.
The petition’s exhibits explain why the case could never be tried in public. On March 1, 2019, three days before she started, Nishizaki initialed a paragraph of her employment application agreeing that “any and all disputes regarding my employment with the Company, including any disputes relating to the termination of my employment,” would go to “final and binding arbitration.” On March 5, her second day, she signed the company’s Agreement to be Bound by Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy. It says in capitals what it takes away: “THIS AGREEMENT IS A WAIVER OF ALL RIGHTS TO A CIVIL COURT ACTION … ONLY AN ARBITRATOR, NOT A JUDGE OR JURY, WILL DECIDE THE DISPUTE.” Between them, the agreement and the policy it incorporates name discrimination on the basis of “religious creed,” retaliation, wrongful termination, violations of public policy, emotional distress and “defamation, pre and post-termination.” Every count she would file four years later was listed in advance. The agreement waives class actions, invokes the Federal Arbitration Act, and has the company pay the arbitrator.
She did not contest it. On November 10, 2023 her lawyer and the company’s signed a joint stipulation sending all six claims to Signature Resolution, a private provider, under American Arbitration Association rules, and staying the court case. The December hearing on the petition was vacated. No judge ever ruled on the clause, because no one asked one to. From that day, the tax question, the hiring, the housing, the salaries and the email to the staff were going to be decided, if at all, in a forum whose record is closed.
The one fact everything else turns on is how Nishizaki’s employment ended, and the record gives four answers, every one from her or from the company.
Her complaint says she was terminated on February 9, the day after her written complaint. Spiegel, flagging down a patrol car on the night of February 8, told the officers he “has not terminated Nishizaki yet but planned to the next day (February 9, 2023).” His declaration two years later says that “before she left the Company at the end of the week, she demanded a substantial severance payment.” And the company’s arbitration brief says, a page apart, both that the Najar confrontation came “after Nishizaki announced she would be leaving Ideal Living” and that the conduct she sued over “pre-date[s] her termination from Ideal Living in February, 2023.”
Fired, resigned, or negotiating an exit at the moment the police report was taken: that was the question her lawsuit existed to answer. If it was answered, it was answered in the arbitration.
For the eighteen months after the stay, the docket shows almost nothing. At the first status conference, on June 7, 2024, no one appeared for Nishizaki, and the minute order records a representation that “the arbitration process is on-going”; the court put the matter over six months. On December 11, 2024 a new lawyer for her, Laurel Haag of Buchsbaum & Haag in Long Beach, appeared through a colleague; “both counsel represent that arbitration is still pending”; the next check-in was set for October 15, 2025.
It was never held. On June 2, 2025, Haag filed a two-page form asking the clerk to dismiss the “entire action of all parties and all causes of action” with prejudice, and the clerk entered it that morning. No defendant signed, and none had to. Spiegel and Newsome, who as of October 2023 had never been served and who were not parties to the arbitration stipulation, left the case that day without ever having appeared in it.
Ten days later, on June 12, Spiegel, Williams and Ideal Living stipulated to settle the extortion case against Najar, and on June 13 they dismissed it. The two closings are mirror images. Hers was with prejudice and final, with no jurisdiction retained. Theirs was without prejudice, with the court keeping jurisdiction to enforce a settlement whose terms are not public. Different lawyers on every side of both cases, and eleven days between the end of one and the end of the other.
What the April 2025 agreement paid, and to whom; its confidentiality provision is the only term the company has described. Whether the all-staff email of February 9 exists as pleaded; it is alleged, not attached. And the three allegations that would matter most if they were true, tax avoidance through the temple ties, hires from the congregation placed over outsiders, and salaries raised “for the purpose of facilitating donations,” which no public document supports and none refutes. The forum that could have tested them was private by contract, and its record is closed.
This update follows Peter Spiegel’s Sworn Account of the Extortion Case, What Peter Spiegel Told the Police and What the Court Found, and What Najar Said Under Oath. Every hosted filing is indexed in the evidence vault.
The JKP Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. The only criminal conviction referenced anywhere on this site is that of Prakashanand Saraswati; every other person named, on every side of every suit, is presumed to have acted lawfully. · Home · Reports · The Map · The Vault