February 1973
Marvin Zindler, Consumer Lawman
A stylish, self-proclaimed public protector battles deception in business and poor taste in fashion.
The boss of the Harris County sheriff's consumer fraud division is a walking example of deceptive advertising. A silver-gray toupee gives the appearance of a full head of carefully styled hair. Two nose operations and a chin job have substantially altered facial features that their owner considered too Jewish. The son of a millionaire merchant and land owner, he parks his sheriff's car in bus zones because his county salary is not large enough to pay parking lot fees.
Deputy Sheriff Marvin Harold Zindler is a hard man to pin down, not only because his considerable energy keeps him moving all over the county, as well as to Austin and Washington and other power centers where consumers have managed to draw the attention of politicians, but also because his complex personality defies neat classification.
His supporters, including the seemingly endless stream of complainants who daily line the benches outside his office, would tell the world Zindler is their only hope in an apparently deaf and powerless arena of local officials. His detractors, including some of the merchants whose pocketbooks and reputations have been crimped by Zindler, maintain he is a raving ogre, verging on paranoia, totally self-seeking and an egomaniac besides.
Such polarities are inspired by a man as colorful and unpredictable as a pinball machine, a man driven to equal heights of pique and rage by a roofer defrauding a widow of her life savings or a drug store not stocking candy bars it advertised. A man who carries a pistol and handcuffs to address a Sunday afternoon meeting of old folks at the Jewish Community Center.
Since he began his consumer operation in October, 1971, Zindler has brought the weight of criminal sanctions against store owners, repairmen, pyramid club operations, building contractors and others whose disputes with customers formerly were settled in the civil courts, if at all. He has shown little favoritism in targets for his criminal charges. Defendants range from the advertising director of Foley's, Houston's largest department store, to gypsy palm readers to bookies said to be welching on bets.
His tools are existing state laws, most on the books for years but seldom used in consumer cases, and an uncanny flair for publicity. Both are equally important in his work. The criminal charges he lodges include deceptive advertising, a misdemeanor, and theft by bailee, a felony. He has lost count of the number of formal complaints filed, but they probably approach a thousand.
This record is no small accomplishment for a man crammed into a small suite of offices off a stairwell on the seventh floor of the Houston Criminal Courts Building and operating with a staff that includes one other deputy, two secretaries and an assistant district attorney assigned to screen the criminal charges.
The results of all this fire and smoke so far are hard to measure. Consumerism is necessarily plagued to a certain extent by P. T. Barnum's Law (There's a sucker born every minute): For every shady operator shut down, at least two will probably take his place and find willing customers. But at least citizens of Houston and its environs are learning that in Zindler they have an ally.
And they flock to him with continual tales of outrage, despair and woe: complainants in business suits from downtown office buildings, housewives in curlers and slippers, blacks and chicanos in worn garb. They sit on an old wooden bench, perhaps discarded from a courtroom or church sanctuary, grumbling, sharing stories of what they consider to be wrongdoing at the hands of the commercial sector.
One man says he had to pay almost twice the agreed figure to get his car back from a repair shop. "The manager just laughed at me. Maybe Mr. Zindler can help me." A young, attractive housewife contracted to have a new roof put on her house. The contractor did one day's work and never came back, even though she had already paid him half the price. She can't afford a lawyer and figures the consumer fraud division offers a way out of her jam.
They wait—as many as 80 a day—in a narrow, dark, noisy corridor. Once inside the office, the din does not noticeably subside. The phone complaints are if anything more numerous than the ones made in person. Callers are frequently greeted with, "Consumer fraud division. Can you hold, please?" Jerry-built walls provide cubicles for Zindler, the secretaries and Deputy E. L. Adams and Assistant District Attorney Neal Duval, who interview the great majority of complaints.
Zindler is out of his office as much as he is in—making speeches, arresting persons charged by his division, visiting the press room in the courthouse, filing charges in a justice of the peace office. Adams, a remarkably calm and good-humored man, grouses occasionally about Zindler's absenteeism, complaining that if the boss talked to more people, the lines wouldn't be so long. Zindler himself complains that his staff and office space aren't big enough. "They put me in an office next door to the men's room" he says.
Not all complaints, of course, result in criminal charges. Some problems are resolved over the telephone. Some persons are referred to other offices, such as the small claims courts. Filing a criminal charge does not guarantee any specific results. A lot of Zindler's charges have been tossed out by justices of the peace, who say that the matters are civil in nature or that no one was hurt by the transaction. Defendants, however, have learned they cannot rest easy after a justice of the peace dismissed the charges.
In one such case Zindler charged the owner of a car repair firm with theft by bailee after a customer complained he had been unable to get his car back from the company, even though he had offered to pay the repair bill, because the company wanted him to sign a statement that he had inspected all the parts installed in his car. He refused to sign the statement.
A justice of the peace later dismissed the case, but Duvall presented the matter to a grand jury, which indicted the owner, J. J. Enright of Texas Motor Exchange, on the theft charge. A district court jury, in what Duvall termed the first major court victory in consumer fraud cases in Houston, convicted Enright last November and gave him a five-year probated sentence.
That conviction added to Zindler's stature and respectability around the courthouse, although he shared the limelight with Duvall, who prosecuted the case. Other lawmen, attorneys and reporters who had grown accustomed to seeing Zindler's lawsuits dismissed or who had branded him as an incorrigible publicity hound were forced to revise their estimates. "You can damn sure bet he's got the attention of car repairmen now," was a common reaction to the outcome of the case, which is on appeal.
In a reversal of their usual relationship with Zindler, newsmen sought him out after Enright's conviction. He gave an uncharacteristically modest statement, saying only, "It was a victory for the people." Usually it is Zindler who is looking for reporters, and when he calls, they come running. No other law enforcement official in Houston, probably in Texas, can summon reporters and cameramen on such short notice and with such regularity.
Years spent as a photographer for the now defunct Houston Press and as the public relations director for the sheriff's office have honed his knack for spotting the unusual, comic, and —occasionally—significant story. The only common theme running through stories Zindler gives to the media is Zindler. And he knows that it's not a story unless someone is there to report it. He admits to using the media whenever possible to his own advantage. "I want the public to know I'm here to help them and I want the crooks and cheats to know I'll get them," he says.
He loves to see his name in print and his face on the six o'clock evening news. He subscribes to the theory that no story about him can be a bad story, that any mention of his name, even critically, is good. He carries at all times a list with the phone numbers of local television stations and newspapers.
Recently he alerted the TV stations that he was going to a Walgreen's drug store to arrest the manager for deceptive advertising. Zindler beat the camera crew to the store, and, instead of going ahead with his arrest, wandered around the magazine stand killing time until the newsmen arrived.
Zindler stories have an almost mystical ability to mushroom and generate other Zindler stories. Late last year he charged the sales manager of a large, Florida-based appliance store with deceptive advertising for allegedly failing to provide a customer with a raincheck guaranteed in a newspaper ad. That was the first story. After he filed the charge, Zindler called the manager and asked him to come to the courthouse. The man did, and posted a personal recognizance bond, but Zindler didn't know about it.
A couple of days later, Zindler obtained a warrant for the man's arrest and, with his usual posse of television cameramen, went to the store to pick him up. On seeing evidence that the manager had already posted bond, Zindler backed down. That was the second story.
The store and the manager retaliated by slapping Zindler with a $35,000 lawsuit in federal court, accusing him of hurting the store's trade and slandering its integrity. That was the third story.
Zindler, not to be outdone, generated the fourth story when, on the complaints of two customers, he filed two more charges of deceptive advertising against the store manager.
