A federal judge ruled that a family claiming it’s getting cheated out of its restaurant business can pursue its lawsuit in L.A. County Superior Court, in a motion issued Friday.
An ongoing dispute between the Mercado family and the late Harry Arklin’s successors reached the courts in January, after the family filed a lawsuit, which included federal claims of copyright infringement over who owns “The Original Saugus Cafe.”
After years of tending bar there, Alfredo Mercado purchased the restaurant more than 25 years ago — but not the building at 25861 Railroad Ave. where it operated.
After Arklin died, Mercado’s landlord, according to the lawsuit, briefly engaged in a conversation with Mercado about purchasing the business.
Mercado’s suit claimed that this was a false pretense, as Arklins’ successors moved to file a federal trademark for the name of the Mercados’ restaurant and logo one day before asking Mercado to sign a new lease.
The new lease deprived Mercado of all the property inside the restaurant that he had purchased over the years, as well as the ability to film there, and other terms that made running the business impossible, according to Mercado’s daughter, Yesenia Mercado, in a previous interview with The Signal. She said the family was forced the lease under threat of being kicked out of the location.
The current landlord for the address, which now operates a different restaurant, said that’s absolutely not true, and that the Mercados did not own the business.
On Feb. 18, attorneys for the Arklins moved for the case to be in federal court, which Judge Hernan Vera said is generally proper if there is a federal dispute and the amount in controversy is more than $75,000.
However, after Steffanie Stelnick, the attorney for the Mercado family, filed an amended complaint April 17 that dropped the federal claims, that was no longer the case.
“The court in Carnegie-Mellon reasoned that ‘in the usual case’ the balance of factors — judicial economy, convenience, fairness and comity — will weigh toward remanding any remaining pendent state claims to state court,” Vera said, citing the relevant case law. “Now lacking any remaining federal question early in the litigation, the court declines to exercise jurisdiction over the (first amended complaint) and remands the action to Los Angeles Superior Court for all further proceedings.”
The case has been remanded to the Chatsworth courthouse, but there’s no updated hearing scheduled as of this story’s publication.
