Irvine Co. and Tenant Headed for Trial : Legal action: The long battle between the landowner and Lion Country Safari will have its next round May 19 in bankruptcy court.

If he had his druthers, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge James Barr said Tuesday, the Irvine Co. and Lion Country Safari Inc. would agree to disagree in Superior Court rather than before his bench in Santa Ana.

But the Irvine Co. held firm in its determination to keep the dispute with its tenant in bankruptcy court. The judge ruled that it would be unfair to the huge landowner to change rules in the middle of the game, so he set a trial date of May 19.

Lion Country Safari voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors last year--six years after it closed the wild animal park--but it later moved to have the petition dismissed, deciding that it would rather have its long battle with the Irvine Co. resolved before a jury.

Lion Country Safari, which is owned by United Leisure Corp. of Laguna Hills, claims that its landlord has been trying to harass the company off the property it leases by interfering with proposed projects, among them a swap meet and horseback-riding trails. Lion Country Safari sued the Irvine Co. in 1986, seeking general damages of about $45 million in lost profits, plus unspecified punitive damages.

The Irvine Co., for its part, says that Lion Country Safari still owes $1.7 million in unpaid rent. Irvine Co. attorneys argued that if the bankruptcy proceedings were dismissed, the company would lose the opportunity to prove its allegations that Lion Country Safari illegally transferred $887,000 to preferred creditors immediately before it filed Chap ter 11.

Barr took less than a minute after calling the court to order to announce his decision. Without so much as a glance at the charts and manuscripts the Irvine Co. attorneys had armed themselves with, the judge denied Lion County Safari’s motion for dismissal of its bankruptcy petition.

He did, however, say in a rhetorical musing: “What if the parties were to agree to go back to state court to decide?” Barr added that, because of the complexity of the case, “in the end, I may refer this over to (the U.S.) District Court.”

Lion Country Safari President Harry Shuster expressed disappointment after the hearing. “I would have preferred a jury trial,” he said.

Lion Country Safari’s 28-year lease of 300 valuable acres off the San Diego Freeway and Irvine Center Drive runs until 1997. The company operated a drive-through wild animal park on the land until 1984, when it closed it after years of poor attendance.

In 1986, Lion Country Safari sublet some of the property to Wild Rivers, a profitable water park. The Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, built in 1981, also pays rent to Lion Country Safari as well as to the Irvine Co. About 200 acres of the leased land is not now in use.

The Irvine Co. denies accusations that it is trying to shove Lion Country Safari off its property before the lease expires.