Arbitrators side with Ashby in battle with BRAF over downtown Hilton

An arbitration panel has ordered an affiliate of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation to pay Camm Morton, the ousted manager of the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center, for his company’s management of the hotel. The Capitol House Hotel Operating Company dismissed Morton’s company, Ashby Hospitality, from its management duties of the downtown hotel in June 2010. Ashby was ousted in a dispute over who would pay for the accounting services at the hotel: the owners of the property or the management company. CHH says Ashby agreed to pay for accounting; Ashby says CHH paid the fees for two years and that the battle over accounting was a ploy to force the management company to take lower fees. The case went to arbitration, and last week the panel issued an award in favor of Ashby, turning down every claim filed by CHH. The value of the award, which covers unpaid fees and the six months left on the Ashby contract, is estimated at up to $2 million. Stephen Babcock, Morton’s attorney, says the panel’s findings will go to 19th Judicial District Judge Wilson Fields. “We expect Judge Fields to confirm the arbitration award in the next couple of weeks,” Babcock says. Morton developed the Capitol Center in 2006 and 2007, when he was president of Commercial Properties, BRAF’s for-profit real estate company. He resigned from that position in December 2007 to form Ashby, which assumed management of the hotel the following month. Jude Bursavich, an attorney representing CHH, says the dispute is still pending and would not comment further. In court filings, attorneys for CHH say they are weighing their options and that Morton should have nothing to do with operations of the hotel or its employees until further notice. —Timothy Boone