March 8, 2007 in City

Court rejects appeal over River Park Square

• Print
• Email
• Share

The owner and operator of River Park Square is running out of options to contest the $6.5 million a Spokane jury said it owes its former mall manager.

The state Supreme Court this week denied a request to hear the appeal of the case involving Cowles Co. development firms and RWR Management, a company owned by Bob Robideaux. The denial leaves intact a 2004 jury award previously upheld by a state appeals court.

“I think this is the end of it,” Robert Dunn, an attorney for Robideaux, said. “It’s a good day for the jury system.”

Jennifer West, a spokeswoman for the development firms, said there’s been no decision on further legal action.

“We are disappointed in the outcome of the appeal and continue to believe that the appeal had merit,” said Ladd Leavens, attorney for the Cowles Co.

The only place to appeal a state Supreme Court decision is the U.S. Supreme Court, Dunn said.

Cowles Co. holdings also include The Spokesman-Review, KHQ-TV and the Journal of Business.

Robideaux was hired by Cowles development companies to manage River Park Square in 1988 and held that position through the planning, construction and opening of the downtown mall’s renovation. The project, which involved a public-private partnership with the city of Spokane, became controversial when questions arose about the kinds of assistance the city agreed to give the mall and the parking garage.

When the renovated mall opened in 1999, the garage quickly ran into financial problems because of high parking fees. That led to problems paying off the garage bonds, which affected other financial underpinnings of the mall. A series of lawsuits was filed, including a securities fraud lawsuit by purchasers of the garage bonds that named the city, Cowles development companies and RWR Management.

In late 2002, Robideaux was told RWR’s management contract would not be renewed when it was up the next year. He sued for fraud, breach of contract and bad faith, claiming he hadn’t been adequately paid.

He said he was owed $1.7 million but offered to settle for $550,000.

The development companies denied that he was owed anything saying he’d been paid adequately, according to contracts they had.

“We have lived up to every speck of those contracts,” Betsy Cowles, president of the development companies, said at the time.

After a trial at which Robideaux and Betsy Cowles both testified, a Spokane County Superior Court jury ruled in 2004 that he had performed extra services for the development companies in the mall’s renovation for which he had a right to expect payment. The jury set the value of those services at $6.5 million, or 5.5 percent of the cost of the mall’s renovation.

The mall owners appealed, and at one point the dispute over paying the judgment engulfed the former JC Penney building in downtown Spokane, which is owned by a Cowles subsidiary. Robideaux tried to force the sale of the building to pay off the judgment, and the Cowles subsidiary filed for bankruptcy.

A federal bankruptcy judge later dismissed the bankruptcy as a “device,” and the mall development companies purchased an appeal bond to guarantee the judgment at the end of the appeal process.

No comments on this story so far. Add yours!