City close to deal on PacAm

Elise Gee

COSTA MESA -- The city is close to brokering a deal between residents who

live near the Pacific Amphitheatre and its former owners to prevent at

least one more lawsuit in a 20-year history of litigation.

Under the deal, former amphitheater owners Nederlander would givethe city

$100,000 in exchange for an agreement with two residents not to sue

Nederlander over sound-restriction enforcement.

The residents are currently able to sue because of last year’s settlement

with the Orange County Fair, in which a judge determined that Nederlander

was no longer obligated to enforce the sound restrictions. Therefore,

Nederlander violated a previous judgment in which Nederlander agreed to

enforce noise-level limits.

However, residents still are appealing an antitrust lawsuit brought by

the fair against Nederlander. Although city officials hope their

involvement will convince residents to drop the appeal, the residents’

attorney, Richard Spix, said he and his clients have not totally

committed to doing so.

“Both sides have dug in their heels and we’re trying to find a middle

ground that makes everyone happy,” said Mayor Gary Monahan.

The $100,000 from Nederlander would go toward helping the city monitor

noise at the amphitheater at levels that would not render the venue

useless and that are apparently acceptable to both the fair and the

residents.

Residents appealed the antitrust lawsuit partly because it threw out

measures to enforce noise restrictions, leaving “nobody watching the

henhouse” if the venue reopened, Spix said.

Although the fair board has not decided whether to reopen the venue, a

two-year master planning process for the entire fairgrounds is expected

to begin early next year, said General Manager Becky Bailey-Findley. The

last concert held at the amphitheater was in 1995.

The fair had filed a fraud and antitrust lawsuit against the Nederlander

organization in 1995, claiming Nederlander sold the Pacific Amphitheatre

for $12.5 million knowing that sound restrictions in the sale agreement

made the venue useless. The two parties reached a reported $16-million

settlement last year. However, that was not the end of the case.

In 1996, Mesa del Mar residents Jeanne Brown and Laurie Lusk, who are

represented by Spix, intervened in the lawsuit on the side of Nederlander

in an effort to invoke enforcement rights and keep sound restrictions in

place.

A judge ruled this year that Brown and Lusk are responsible for more than

$50,000 of the $4.4 million in court and legal fees for their part in the

lawsuit. The fair board voted last month to collect on the award.

Board president Don Saltarelli has said that the fair had an obligation

to taxpayers to collect those legal and court fees from the residents.

The city became involved as an attempt to end the long and acrimonious

history of litigation behind the amphitheater, said City Manager Allan

Roeder.

“It’s been very frustrating to the City Council to hear complaints from

residents and not have the legal or political wherewithal to do

anything,” he said.

But Spix said he will push ahead with the litigation regardless of the

agreement being brokered by the city.

“The fair board recently voted to collect every penny from Laurie and

Jean,” Spix said. “That’s really a message to me, not to anybody else. I

got their message, and my appeals brief will be filed in the next week or

so, then the ball will be in their court.”