A Charlottesville judge has confirmed Minor Family Hotels’ multi-million dollar arbitration award in the legal battle between the owner and former developer of the vacant Landmark Hotel.
Judge Edward L. Hogshire signed the order Wednesday in Charlottesville Circuit Court, rendering the award of $4.2 million in damages, $2.2 million in attorneys’ fees and any additional fees or losses in effect.
The parties have been embroiled in lawsuits and countersuits against each other since construction on the nine-story hotel halted in November 2008 and both men began making conflicting statements about its status. Earlier this year, Hogshire ordered the companies into arbitration on parts of the complaints not related to contract termination.
The award was detailed in a June 28 letter from Arbitrator Donald H. Kent, who presided over an April arbitration hearing for Halsey Minor’s Minor Family Hotels LLC and Lee Danielson’s Hotel Charlottesville LLC. Kent ruled that Danielson’s company breached its development agreement with Minor Family Hotels by misrepresenting the budget and true costs, not telling Minor that restaurant costs weren’t included and by not acting in the owner’s best interests with the project’s lender and the media.
C. Connor Crook, Hotel Charlottesville’s attorney, said in court that he opposed the award. Crook argued that Minor Family Hotels’ amended complaint didn’t ask for a specific amount of damages.
“It would be improper to order damages not requested in the complaint,” Crook said in court.
Bethany M. Palmer, a lawyer from the California-based DLA Piper that is reprensenting Minor’s company, said in court that a failure to specify damages in the complaint isn’t a basis for the court to throw out or modify the arbitration award.
Crook also brought up concerns that Kent phrased the arbitration award too vaguely, not laying out specifically what Hotel Charlottesville did and what Minor Family Hotels did. Crook asked if the judge would send the parties back to Kent to clarify, lest the attorney have to try the whole suit again.
Palmer said in court that Kent’s language was obvious.
“The award is very clear that all of the acts were committed by Lee Danielson,” Palmer said in court.
The judge, who expressed a desire for the suit to be over, overruled Crook’s objections.
Both attorneys for Minor and Danielson gave cautious answers when asked about the next step in the lawsuit.
Crook said there is an order to compel mediation in the legal battle between Minor and a subsidiary of the failed Silverton Bank by Sept. 30. Minor has said in court filings that the Atlanta-based Specialty Finance Group, which was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., didn’t make loan payments on the hotel. The bank’s filings accuse Minor of defaulting on the loan.
When asked what the next step was in suit between Danielson and Minor, Palmer said Minor Family Hotels wants to go to trial.
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