T&C Properties v. St. James Property Co. CA1/2

BACKGROUND

The Parties and the General Setting It has long been said that arbitration is favored as a “ ‘speedy and relatively inexpensive means of dispute resolution.’ ” (Moncharsh v. Heily & Blase (1992) 3 Cal.4th 1, 9 and cases there collected; Ramirez v. Charter Communications, Inc. (2024) 16 Cal.5th 478, 492.) That description hardly applies here, an arbitration that lasted over three years and generated combined attorney fees to the parties exceeding $1 million. While all the reasons for this are not in the record, one reason may be this observation from the experienced arbitrator, the Honorable Richard Kramer (Ret.), who would later explain, “this case could have been a relatively simple landlord- tenant dispute regarding the terms of a long-term lease/holdover arrangement” for the property, but for “two crucial complicating factors,” one of which “is that the principals of each of the entities involved in this dispute, including the non-party tenant [RSC], are feuding family members embroiled in a fight that has spanned two generations.” The participants in this generational dispute were Harold “Bob” Rubenstein (who died in 2018), his wife Lillian, and two of their three…