La Mota owner Aaron Mitchell, whose battle with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission and dealings with former Secretary of State Shemia Fagan put him and his longtime partner Rosa Cazares in the spotlight this spring, finds himself in another bitter legal battle.
This time, it’s with the owners of a sushi restaurant in Roseburg that shares a wall with one of La Mota’s 30 Oregon dispensaries.
The court battle started last fall over a sewer line in the building. Mitchell and one of the LLCs he controls sued Kwang Cheol Park and Young Ho Park, the owners of Ami Sushi, in Douglas County Circuit Court alleging that they had “tapped into plaintiffs sewer line rather than construct and maintain their own line.” As a result, Mitchell’s lawsuit said, the Parks’ sewer line was “depositing corrosive restaurant waste into Plaintiff’s sewer line” that caused the failure of the line and allegedly emitted a foul odor into the dispensary. The lawsuit alleged the odor caused the dispensary lost profits amounting to $200,000.
In their response to Mitchell’s lawsuit, the Parks asserted they had easement rights to the sewer line, and had used the line for more than a decade without trouble. The Parks denied they