Legal fees waived in amphitheater dispute

Danette Goulet

COSTA MESA--A long-running dispute over noise at the Pacific Amphitheatre

finally has been settled, with two women getting off the hook for $52,000

in legal fees.

The Orange County Fair and Exposition Board agreed Friday to waive the

legal fees that a court ordered Costa Mesa residents Jeanne Brown and

Laurie Lusk to pay in return for their agreement to drop an appeal

stemming from the theater’s use.

“We’d been talking to them for some time and we were anxious to [settle

it] before spending a great deal of time on fighting an appeal,” said

Donald Saltarelli, fair board president. “The board never really wanted

to hurt these ladies financially.”

For Brown and Lusk, the fight goes back to the 1980s, when the concert

venue was owned and operated by the Nederlander Organization and huge

concerts rocked the neighborhood.

Shortly after the theater opened in 1983, complaints and lawsuits from

its neighbors began flooding in, prompting the Orange County Fair to buy

the facility for $12.5 million in 1993.

In 1995, the fairgrounds sued Nederlander, saying it sold the concert

venue while it knew that sound restrictions on the facility rendered it

useless.

When the fair filed suit against Nederlander, Brown and Lusk sided with

the concert promoter in a bid to ensure that the noise restrictions

remained intact.

Before a jury decided the case, Nederlander and the fairgrounds reached a

reported $16-million settlement. That left Brown and Lusk, who wanted no

part of the settlement, possibly holding the bag for the plaintiff’s $4.3

million in legal fees.

“What we wanted was for someone to monitor [the noise],” Brown said.

Superior Court Judge Robert Thomas ordered the two women to pay $45,872

in attorney’s fees and $5,800 in court costs, which they had been

previously ordered to pay. Friday’s settlement relieved the women of

those financial obligations.

The city of Costa Mesa agreed Thursday that if the amphitheater were to

be used again, it would monitor any concerts and enforce Orange County’s

noise ordinance through August 2023, said Richard Spix, the women’s

attorney.

The cost of monitoring will be paid by a $100,000 fund set up by the

Nederlander organization, he said.

“We’re very pleased that it’s over with and we’re happy that the city is

going to take over the responsibility should they have concerts there

again,” Brown said. “I’m sorry that it took this long and this many

appearances in court.”

Although it is unlikely that the amphitheater will reopen, Saltarelli

said the fair was left with the noise restrictions that were always in

place.

“It is unlikely that it can be opened. Certainly it can’t be reopened as

it is,” he said. “I think the only way to open it would be to put a cover

on it and that should solve our noise problems.”

The board now will begin a two-year process to determine how to

rejuvenate the entire fairgrounds, Saltarelli said.

A consultant is expected to be hired to study all the different venues at

the fairgrounds and set a new plan in motion that would reflect the

community’s wants and be finically feasible for the fairgrounds, he said.