Transit Company Seeks Damages : Courts: Super Car Service wants reparation from Valley Cab Co. for a bruising battle over taxicab customers.

A charter transit firm Tuesday asked for $560,000 to cover damages it says it suffered after a competitor, Valley Cab Co., launched a bruising campaign in 1988 to drive it out of business--including citizen’s arrests of its drivers.

The claim was submitted by Super Car Service, a North Hollywood-based firm, in a hearing before Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Marvin D. Rowen. Rowen is reviewing the claim.

The opportunity for Super Car to seek damages arose in August after Rowen dismissed a Valley Cab lawsuit that accused Super Car of engaging in unfair business practices.

Valley Cab, which has the city’s exclusive taxi franchise in the San Fernando Valley, sued Super Car in 1989, alleging that the charter carrier was illegally operating as a taxicab company by picking up patrons who hailed its drivers on the street.

Valley Cab also accused Super Car of monitoring its radio dispatches and trying to beat its drivers to customers who had phoned in requests for pick-ups.

Super Car does about 75% of its business in the San Fernando Valley. Super Car, which has a state permit to be a charter carrier, picks up its passengers by appointment.

The war Valley Cab waged against Super Car took on bizarre proportions.

Most notably it included an unofficial sting operation in which Valley Cab employees and an off-duty police officer tried to lure Super Car drivers into picking them up off street corners, a taxi-like service not allowed under the company’s permit, said John deBrauwere, attorney for Super Car.

As a result of the sting operation, Valley Cab crews made citizen’s arrests of seven Super Car drivers. No charges were ever filed against the drivers by the city attorney’s office.

In August, Valley Cab never showed up at a hearing on its lawsuit, a lapse that resulted in the dismissal, deBrauwere said. Valley Cab officials could not be reached for comment on Tuesday’s courtroom development.

Valley Cab, embroiled in another territorial battle, is trying to turn back a Los Angeles City Council plan that would allow a second cab company to operate in the Valley. “I think they must have been preoccupied,” deBrauwere said of the failure of Valley Cab attorneys to appear in court.

A second taxi franchise is needed in the Valley to handle anticipated growth in demand for taxi services and--through competition--to make Valley Cab more competitive, the advocates of a second company have argued.