Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : CITIES : Santa Ana Loses Legal Round to Adult Theater

The 11-year-old legal donnybrook between the City of Santa Ana and the Mitchell Brothers adult theater won’t be affected by a judge’s decision that a theater cannot be shut down simply because it shows allegedly obscene films, lawyers for both sides said last week.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Harmon G. Scoville’s ruling basically reiterated constitutional law against prior restraint of free speech, the lawyers said.

“I don’t think it’s earthshaking. It’s just one more time that a judge has ruled on that issue,” theater attorney Stuart Buckley said.

But James Clancy, the city’s legal representative in the battle, noted that the judge did not rule on the legality of a city ordinance that would revoke the Mitchell Brothers’ business license if the theater were proven to be a public nuisance. Clancy said he has based all of more than 40 lawsuits that have been filed weekly on that ordinance.

That issue, he said, is on appeal after a previous decision by another Superior Court judge, who ruled that closing a theater for showing allegedly obscene films is no different than revoking its business license.

Mitchell Brothers lawyer Buckley predicted it will be quite a while before the city’s appeal reaches a courtroom. But in the meantime, lawsuits filed in the case over the last 11 years are continuing to wind their way through the courts.

On Dec. 18, Judge Robert J. Polis will preside over a hearing on how much the city should be required to pay in attorneys’ fees for a lawsuit he decided in the theater’s favor earlier this year.

Theater attorney Tom Steel has filed accounting of fees in that case and in the case decided by Judge Owens at more than $450,000. But he said last week that theater owners Artie and James Mitchell remain interested in settling the issue.

The City Council rejected a settlement proposal earlier this year, in which the city would drop prosecution in return for the Mitchell Brothers dropping their demand for attorneys’ fees.

Steel said he was hopeful that the election of two new council members, Miguel Pulido and Ron May, would change the council’s attitude. Both men said during their campaigns that they did not believe the costly litigation would result in closing the theater.

“I’m not happy with just spending money, especially if we agree that it is not effective,” Pulido said last week.