Montrose Collection’s civil trial is delayed

LOS ANGELES— A Superior Court judge delayed the trial slated to start Monday for the civil lawsuit that the owners of the Montrose Collection Restaurant and Banquet Hall filed against Glendale, asking the city to answer some questions.

The suit claims that the city unfairly revoked the restaurant’s reduced-parking permit last year.

The judge put off the opening statements Monday because he had several questions about the case, including whether his courtroom has jurisdiction over the matter and whether the city has exhausted all its administrative avenues to resolve the case.

“We’ve got some un-briefed issues here . . . that are going to determine whether there really is a mandate case that I should hear on the merits,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe said. “I think you’ve got to brief those issues, and I have to decide them before I decide what else, if anything, I should do in this case.”

Chief Assistant City Atty. Michael Garcia and Senior Assistant City Atty. Ann Maurer, who appeared Monday morning before Yaffe, have until Nov. 10 to file their brief, a legal document that in this case is expected to address Yaffe’s queries raised at the hearing. The case is expected to resume in court Dec. 10.The issue at hand involves Arman and Takui Aivazian,the husband-and-wife team that owns the Montrose Collection Restaurant and Banquet Hall at 2833 Honolulu Ave., operating under the corporate umbrella of Atna Enterprises.

Since the eatery expanded in 2005, the Aivazians have been a lightning rod of controversy in the courtroom and in City Hall.

On Oct. 1, a three-day criminal trial in which the city claimed the eatery illegally operated as a banquet hall ended in favor of the Aivazians after more than a year of investigations and interviews.

That criminal proceeding followed a Sept. 13, 2007, City Hall session in which a fight to regain a reduced-parking permit ended abruptly for the Aivazians when three council members recused themselves from the hearing, letting a Board of Zoning Appeals decision stand to revoke it.

Without the parking-reduction permit — which was revoked in June 2007 — the Montrose Collection owners were forced to secure an additional nine parking spaces to accommodate a 1,210-square-foot expansion completed in 2005.