The Alabama Supreme Court decided Friday to uphold a lower court’s decision in a civil fraud lawsuit against Orem Mayor David Young and his son, Shawn Young. In 2022, the court issued a decision against the two, finding the plaintiff, Ross Gagliano, was defrauded in an investment into Shawn Young’s real estate endeavor.

According to court documents, the Supreme Court simply affirmed the lower court’s decision with no opinion provided.

“The Alabama Supreme Court ‘affirmed the existing judgment with no opinion’ and basically ignored any of the egregious legal issues listed in the seventy-page brief filed by my legal team,” David Young said in a statement.

Daniel Evans, Alabama attorney for Gagliano, said they are “very pleased” to hear the higher court’s decision Friday.

“We didn’t think there was any merit to the appeal to start with,” Evans said. “It just delayed any kind of compensation to Mr. Gagliano.”

The appeal was initially filed in October 2022 after a Jefferson County, Alabama, Circuit Court judge ruled in May 2022 that Shawn Young had failed to repay loans Gagliano made in investing in Young’s house-flipping business in Alabama.

The judge ordered damages to be paid to the plaintiff amounting to about $1 million. Of the sum, $678,471 was for punitive damages and the remaining $339,235 amounted to the loans and interest owed to Gagliano.

David Young provided a written statement to the Daily Herald, saying, “I have never borrowed money from a private individual in my 67 years of doing business. I did not have anything to do with Mr. Gagliano and my 37-year-old son Shawn’s business transaction. Everyone involved clearly knows that, and the court testimony of the plaintiff illustrates that as well. A judge taking a $140,000 debt owed by my son and transforming it into a million-plus judgment makes no sense. I will use every legal option to protect my family from what I see as legal extortion.”

According to previous Daily Herald reporting, a writ of garnishment was issued for a portion of the mayor’s city wages to help pay off the debt.

In the judge’s decision, David Young was found to have had a duty to inform Gagliano that his son had a gambling addiction and “had misappropriated and gambled away the loan proceeds.”

The judge stated Gagliano had made the loans to Torch13 LLC, which David Young founded and is a registered agent of, according to Utah business records.

According to the court’s May 2022 judgment, Gagliano had made various loans to Shawn Young in 2017 and 2018 to be paid back with interest. The document states that in 2018, David Young wired a partial payment in Torch13 funds to Gagliano, which the judge said confirmed the loans were made to the company, not just Shawn Young.

According to David Young, Shawn Young was an employee of Torch13 and managed the company in Alabama. David Young said he did not know of his son’s arrangement with Gagliano until “after the fact” and said he was not party to the loans and he is not obligated to them.

The elder Young referred to the lawsuit as a “money grab,” adding he believes corporate veil law should protect him from any Torch13 debts.

Gagliano also filed a lawsuit in Utah District Court in November against David Young and his wife, alleging they violated Utah’s Uniform Voidable Transfer Act when David Young transferred millions in assets into a trust in his wife’s name. The lawsuit states the trust was created in 2021 while the Alabama lawsuit was being litigated.

The lawsuit asks that the transferred assets be sold in “order to satisfy the judgment” in the 2022 Alabama case, according to public court documents.

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