Wells won’t be forced to testify

A developer’s ideas about what the former J.C. Penney building in downtown Spokane could become aren’t necessarily part of the legal dispute between the Cowles real estate companies and their former manager.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor refused Friday to order developer Ron Wells to testify in the ongoing efforts of R.W. Robideaux Management to collect a $6.5 million jury verdict from the Cowles subsidiaries. If Robideaux’s attorneys can explain in detail why they think Wells’ knowledge is important to the dispute, he might have to testify, the judge said Friday.

Wells, a Spokane developer whose projects have included Steam Plant Square, was involved in creating a redevelopment plan for the J.C. Penney building.

RWR is entitled seek every recourse in the dispute, attorney Robert Dunn said at one point in the hearing, and “we’re gonna go after the building.”

Wells’ plans are relevant to those efforts, Dunn said. “The question is, what is the building worth?”

But the company didn’t need to talk to Wells in order to decide whether it wanted to seize the building, responded Cheryl Adamson, an attorney for Cowles. RWR owner Bob Robideaux is “a self-proclaimed expert on downtown real estate” and wouldn’t need to see the plans except to “steal the ideas of Mr. Wells,” Adamson argued.

The early morning hearing was the latest step in an ongoing legal battle between the former business associates.

RWR managed River Park Square mall for 13 years, through the downtown center’s $117 million renovation, until 2002, when a dispute over compensation led to the company filing a lawsuit and the Cowles real estate companies terminating its management contract.

The companies are owned by Cowles Publishing Co., which also owns The Spokesman-Review.

Last summer, O’Connor presided over a trial in which a jury awarded Robideaux a total of $6.5 million for uncompensated work he said he did as project coordinator, project developer and construction manager of the renovated mall.

The Cowles’ companies have appealed the verdict, but have not obtained a bond for the $6.5 million judgment while the case works its way through the courts. One of the firms, CPC Development Co., owns the former J.C. Penney Building at Main and Lincoln, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October to keep it from being seized for the judgment.

One reason the company needed bankruptcy protection, company officials said during bankruptcy proceedings, was to allow the vacant Penney’s building to be redeveloped and reopen with a restaurant from an unnamed national chain, retail space and some high-end residential condominiums. Empty, the building’s value is about $2.4 million; redeveloped, it’s worth significantly more.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Patricia Williams dismissed the bankruptcy filing as unnecessary last month, saying it was essentially a dispute between RWR and the Cowles firms. When RWR attorneys sought Wells’ plans for the building as part of their efforts to collect the jury verdict, Cowles officials balked, saying they were proprietary, and Wells refused to appear for a deposition.

“Wells has apparently done extra work to determine the highest and best use” of the building, Dunn said. That makes his knowledge relevant.

But Adamson argued the request for a deposition was more akin to harassment of the president of the development companies, Betsy Cowles.

“They want to make Betsy Cowles so uncomfortable by having all these people she knows deposed that she’ll file a supersedeas bond,” Adamson said. That’s the type of bond that can be filed to hold off a judgment while a case is appealed.

Wells is not a party to the dispute and can’t be automatically required to testify, O’Connor said. If RWR’s attorneys come up with evidence of why it’s appropriate for him to testify, she said she’d evaluate it, and decide.