Panel denies RPS appeal

The owners of the River Park Square mall owe their former manager $6.5 million for uncompensated work his company performed, a state Appeals Court ruled Tuesday.

The three-judge panel refused to overturn a 2004 jury verdict in favor of R.W. Robideaux and Co., which was fired as the mall management company in late 2002 after a dispute over compensation for the redevelopment of the downtown mall.

Lawyers for the corporate entities that own and operate the mall had argued in the appeal that both the jury and the trial judge, Spokane County Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor, made mistakes during the trial.

“We reject each contention,” said the opinion, written by Appeals Court Judge Stephen Brown and signed by Judges Dennis Sweeney and John Schultheis. “Substantial evidence supports the jury’s verdict in favor of” Robideaux.

The mall companies involved in the lawsuit and the appeal are current or former businesses owned by the Cowles Co., also the owner of The Spokesman-Review.

Diehl Rettig, an attorney for the mall developers, said the companies are “surprised and disappointed” by the decision but still believe the company fulfilled its contractual obligation.

“Given that the decision has just been rendered, we will evaluate our options and determine next steps,” Rettig said in a written statement.

Bob Robideaux declined to discuss the decision Tuesday evening, saying he would refer any comment to Betsy Cowles, president of the mall companies and his former employer. “That’s our agreement,” he said.

Robideaux’s company, RWR Management, was hired by the River Park Square owners in 1988 and was deeply involved in the mall’s renovation throughout the mid- to late 1990s. They had both written contracts and oral agreements on different types of compensation, which led to negotiations over compensation in 1999 and 2000, after the renovated mall and parking garage opened.

In 2002, RWR said it was owed as much as $1.7 million but offered to settle for $550,000; the mall owners refused, saying they had paid Robideaux according to their agreements. Robideaux sued, and the mall owners fired the company in late 2002. During the trial, his attorneys presented a witness who said the fee for the development director of a project the size of the mall renovation could be nearly $7.8 million.

The jury ruled the River Park Square owners had breached their management agreement with RWR but awarded no damages. It also said the mall owners had breached an oral contract but awarded no damages. Instead, the jury said RWR was entitled to $6.5 million for “services which RPS benefited from and knew, or should have known, were performed in the expectation of payment,” a legal concept known as quantum meruit.

In their appeal, attorneys for the mall owners challenged the amount of damages awarded by the jury, the instructions given the jury and other rulings by the trial judge.

The appeals panel rejected all of those challenges. Although the panel couldn’t tell how the jury arrived at the amount, they did hear “substantial evidence” that supports it. Damage awards are for juries to decide and can’t be overturned unless they are clearly unsupported by substantial evidence, the panel said.

The judges also found no error and no prejudice in the instructions given to the jury. Although Judge O’Connor ruled that RPS owners could not use their regular attorneys because that firm had also represented Robideaux, the case was “tried with able counsel,” the appeals panel said.