Hoiles’ Appeal Rejected by Supreme Court : Publishing: Part owner of Freedom Newspapers Inc. has been trying to break up the media firm and take his share of assets, but the courts keep ruling against him.

The state Supreme Court rejected an appeal Wednesday from dissident Freedom Newspapers Inc. shareholder Harry H. Hoiles, ending years of litigation against his siblings’ families in an effort to break up the Irvine-based media concern that owns the Orange County Register.

The high court’s unanimous decision keeps intact lower court rulings against Hoiles, whose family owns one-third of Freedom’s stock. Hoiles wanted to cash in his stock for some assets of the company, which owns 27 daily newspapers, 25 weeklies and five television stations.

“It’s a relief to have a case like that out of the way, but it’s not going to affect our business,” said D. Robert Segal, Freedom’s president. “It’s like a headache you have for a long time: You get used to it, but it’s nice when it goes away.”

Hoiles is the son of the late R.C. Hoiles, a strict Libertarian who founded the company and oversaw its expansion. R.C. Hoiles left a third interest in the company to each of his three children: Harry, Clarence and Mary Jane.

The battle for Freedom is among the many bitter internecine battles for control of family media empires that erupted across the nation in the past decade. Among the casualties was the Bingham family, which sold the Louisville Courier Journal after a divisive family spat.

While Freedom’s litigation has been exhausted in state courts, the matter may not be settled, as far as members of the majority families--those of Mary Jane Hoiles Hardie and the late Clarence H. Hoiles--are concerned. They believe Harry Hoiles and his family will continue in their attempts to split up Freedom.

“We think they have an agenda to still do what it is they want to do,” said Robert C. Hardie, Freedom’s chairman and husband of Mary Jane. “That seems to be the drift we get from them. They seem to be in a very hostile posture most of the time.”

Timothy Hoiles, Harry’s son, said that any hostility stems from the controlling families’ refusal to implement needed changes in the company’s structure and operations. He noted, for instance, that the controlling stockholders had agreed to bring outside directors on the board and then voted in March to reject the idea.

“If we could implement some of those ideas, that would go a long way toward possibly putting things on an even keel,” Timothy Hoiles said.

The two-family majority recently expressed its doubts about the dissidents’ motives by hiring a top takeover specialist and creating a voting block to perpetuate their majority status and thwart unwanted suitors for their family operation. The actions were designed to thwart anyone interested in buying Harry Hoiles’ shares from attempting a takeover.

The actions also appear to ensure that the value of the Harry Hoiles family stock to any outsider would be greatly reduced.

Hoiles, who now lives in the affluent Paradise Valley section of Phoenix, has been battling the families of his sister and late brother for more than a decade in his effort to split up the company and take his share of the assets.

He has accused the other families of reneging on a promise to make him chairman and chief executive after they persuaded him to give up his publisher’s post at the company’s Colorado Springs, Colo., paper in the mid-1970s and return to Santa Ana to help his ailing brother run the firm.

The majority has contended that Hoiles is entitled only to the value of his stock, not the assets. They have asserted that there was no ironclad promise that he would take over the company and that he proved in his short tenure as a co-leader that he could not do the job. His divisive actions throughout the last 10 years, they have alleged, were a result of his anger at not being given sole control of Freedom.