Lawyers Talk Settlement in Hoiles Dispute

Lawyers are talking seriously about settling a bitter, six-year lawsuit to dissolve the highly profitable Freedom Newspapers Inc. media chain, just one month after they gave the case no chance of ending without a long trial.

Since Feb. 9, attorneys for the warring factions of the family that owns Freedom Newspapers have been talking with Orange County Superior Court Judge Leonard Goldstein in all-day, closed sessions in an effort to end the battle without splitting the media chain valued at more than $1 billion.

“There’s a very good chance” the complex case will settle, perhaps as soon as Friday, Vernon W. Hunt Jr., the lawyer for dissident shareholder Harry H. Hoiles, said Wednesday.

Lawyers for the defendants--Freedom Newspapers and the families of Hoiles’ sister and late brother--agreed that by Monday the parties will know whether the case will settle or continue into opening statements at trial.

“There’s still a very large gap in what each side would accept,” said Robert E. Currie, lead counsel for Freedom Newspapers. “I’m encouraged that we have spent several . . . weeks discussing the possibility.”

The lawsuit centers on Hoiles’ claim that the families of Mary Jane Hoiles Hardie and the late Clarence H. Hoiles unfairly ousted him from Freedom’s management in 1981, and since then have not given him and his family a fair voice in running the chain’s media empire.

Hoiles wants one-third of the company’s estimated $1-billion in assets for his branch of the family, which owns 33% of the closely held, family-owned media unit.

Irvine-based Freedom Newspapers owns the Orange County Register, 28 smaller dailies, three weeklies and five television stations. It is the 14th-largest newspaper chain in the nation.