Attorneys for the owners of the Original Saugus Cafe filed an amended complaint Wednesday in a lawsuit seeking compensation for a business they say was taken out from under their clients.
A federal judge previously was scheduled to hear arguments April 23 from attorneys for the current operators of Saugus Cafe, who are seeking to dismiss the complaint filed last year.
Judge Hernan D. Vera ordered the case back to his courtroom for a May 14 hearing, according to federal court records available online.
The lawsuit is part of an ongoing business dispute now being argued in federal court, which began not long after the August death of Henry Arklin, who owned the land where the cafe operated.
The Mercado family had been operating The Original Saugus Cafe for nearly 40 years at 25861 Railroad Ave. The family told The Signal it didn’t have a problem with new management restarting the cafe in the same space. But they also said as owners of the business and name, they should be compensated for that ownership, which comes with a legacy stretching back nearly 140 years.
There’s now a new owner operating a cafe on Railroad Avenue, with a pending federal trademark application for the old name, and the former owners claiming they’ve been given no compensation for their physical or intellectual property.
A representative for North Valley Construction Corp., which controls a number of the Arklins’ holdings, said previously that the Mercado family, the cafe’s previous operators, had no ownership.
Part of the dispute revolves around a lease the Mercado family says it signed under duress prior to being forced out of their business. That lease stripped the family of any of its ability to run a competitive business, denying the family filming rights and property at the location it claimed ownership of, according to a previous interview with a family representative.
A message for Aaron Levine, North Valley’s attorney, was not returned Wednesday.
Steffanie Stelnick, the Mercados’ attorney, confirmed the filing of an amended complaint in a text message Wednesday, with causes of action that demonstrate why the state claims take precedent.
The Mercado family lawsuit was initially filed in L.A. County Superior Court, but the case was removed to federal court through a motion filed by Levine.
The amended complaint states Alfredo Mercado purchased The Original Saugus Cafe in 1998, after working there for many years as a bartender, changing it to its current name from The Old Saugus Cafe once he took over. It operated on the Arklin property through a month-to-month lease as a verbal agreement until Hank Arklin’s death last year.
The suit alleges a representative of Arklin’s family interest asked Mercado if he’d be interested in selling. At that point, according to the suit, things became “hostile.”
The lawsuit states that in addition to a hostile relationship, the Arklin representative had Mercado sign a lease “under duress,” which gave away property Mercado owned. The Arklin representative then moved to create a federal trademark for “The Original Saugus Cafe,” one day before the aforementioned new lease was signed, which denied the Mercado family compensation for all its property, according to the lawsuit.
