After a years-long dispute in courtroom, the CEO of live performance promoter Knitting Factory has succeeded in taking management of beloved Pioneertown music venue Pappy & Harriet’s.
The Los Angeles Superior Court ruling resolves a dispute over considered one of SoCal’s most iconic music venues, a country roadhouse on a former film set that has hosted numerous acts from Paul McCartney and Robert Plant to Lana Del Rey and Jamie xx.
Since 2021, Knitting Factory CEO Morgan Margolis and companions Stephen Hendel and John Chapman have been concerned in a bitter dispute with the venue’s co-partners, Joseph Moresco and Lisa Elin.
In 2021, after Moresco and Elin modified the venue’s locks and blocked Margolis from the venue’s operations, Margolis and his companions sued the couple, alleging breach of contract, breach of fiduciary responsibility and different allegations, and demanded that Moresco and Elin had been eliminated. as common companions.
The jury discovered that Margolis and companions “had the authority to take away Moresco Holdings as the final associate of the partnership. Despite this elimination, the defendants continued to make use of the partnership’s belongings.”
“The resolution confirmed that the Margolis Group ought to have all the time managed the partnership, venue operations and expertise reserving and was unfairly ousted with out foundation,” Knitting Factory Entertainment stated in a press release.
Pappy & Harriet’s bar in Pioneertown.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Margolis added: “We are pleased with a long time of significant and profitable partnerships and business relationships constructed on belief and integrity. We are happy that the choose and jury confirmed what we’ve all the time identified to be true: we had been victims of people that tried to take greater than they bargained for.
“We are excited to maneuver ahead with what we got down to do three years in the past after we bought this iconic location that’s so particular to so many individuals,” he continued. “We stay up for partnering with the neighborhood at massive as we totally embed ourselves within the excessive desert neighborhood to honor the wealthy historical past of Pappy + Harriet.”
Representatives for Moresco and Elin didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. In 2021, Moresco and Elin’s legal professional, Bryan Freedman, described the lawsuit as “nothing greater than a hostile takeover try by New York billionaire Stephen Hendel. Hendel is totally rewriting the case in his newest plot to steal Pappy & Harriet from the neighborhood.
The venue’s destiny underscored deep issues about pandemic-era excessive desert gentrification, as massive actual property and leisure firms battled for management of fascinating properties and improvement alternatives.
Pappy and Harriet’s namesake homeowners, Claude “Pappy” Allen and spouse Harriet, bought the membership in 1982. Pappy died in 1994; in 2003, Harriet offered the bar to Robyn Celia and Linda Krantz. In April 2021, the varied buyers, together with Margolis, closed a $2.5 million transaction to lease and function the venue.
