Legal wrangling continues between downtown Hilton and former manager

The owner of the downtown Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center has filed a new arbitration demand against its former management company in an attempt to erase a previous ruling against the hotel valued at an estimated $2 million. In June, a three-person arbitration panel sided against the hotel’s owner, Capitol House Hotel Operating Company, and ruled for the former management company, Ashby Hospitality, in a dispute over who was responsible for paying for accounting services at the hotel. Ashby Hospitality is owned by Camm Morton, who developed the hotel in 2006 and 2007 while president of Commercial Properties, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation’s for-profit real estate company. Morton resigned from that position in December 2007 to form Ashby Hospitality, which assumed management of the hotel the following month. Ashby Hospitality and Morton were ousted from the hotel over the accounting dispute in June 2010. The arbitration panel ruled CHH Operating is to pay Ashby Hospitality 4% of all revenue from June 2010 through the end of 2012. In its latest arbitration demand, Ashby Hospitality attorney Stephen Babcock says, CHH Operating seeks to be relieved of its payment obligation on the grounds that Ashby Hospitality is not currently approved by Hilton Hotels to manage the property. Babcock says the claim is baseless. “They’re just delaying; that’s the only way you can look at it,” he says. “They’re trying to buy time to pull the money together to pay him (Morton).” BRAF referred a request for comment to CHH Operating attorney Claude Reynaud, who did not return calls. Read the full story here. —Steve Sanoski