Santos Nava, a migrant farm worker from Mexico, was picking peaches in July of 2007 when the bottom of his trousers got caught in a piece of farm equipment and pulled him under the trailer. The accident tore apart the lower part of his body crushing his pelvis, breaking his femur and injuring his hips and sciatic nerve.
Nava was 16 years old and it was his second day on the job. He would never work again.
Lawyer Fernando Chavez, the oldest son of United Farm Workers (UFW) founder Cesar Chavez, took Nava’s case. During the first trial the case was thrown out, but Chavez persisted, filed an appeal, and won. Nava received over a million dollars in compensation six years after the accident.
That combined with a workers’ compensation settlement of over $100,000 in 2017, also negotiated by Chavez, financially set Nava for life, and he settled in Porterville.
But his windfall also brought financial woes, as Nava has been trying since 2020 to recover an investment he made with Paul Chavez, son of Fernando Chavez and grandson of Cesar Chavez.
While most of Nava’s money is secure in an annuity that pays him $2,500 every month, he also received approximately three lump sums of money, which he partially entrusted to the Paul R. Chavez Investment Group.
In 2019, Paul Chavez was recruiting investors for a speculative commercial and residential real estate project in East Palo Alto. Nava invested a total of $165,000 but as time…
