Register Heir Hoiles in New Battle, With His Lawyer

Money isn’t buying happiness in the Tim Hoiles camp. Earlier this year, the heir achieved his long-sought freedom from Freedom Communications, the Irvine holding company of the OC Register and other media properties. Hoiles put the family business into play, won a buyout exceeding his expectations and left adversary kin coping with new corporate debt and outside investors. But instead of celebrating, Hoiles now is locked in a court battle over legal fees with a former ally, flamboyant San Francisco attorney Joseph M. Alioto. Lawyers are deposing lawyers in what could become a donnybrook in U.S. District Court of Colorado. (Hoiles lives in Colorado Springs.) The filings are juicy. Alioto says his contract entitles him to $21.3 million,15% of the $142 million that was paid to Tim Hoiles’ family for its 8.6% share of Freedom. (Alioto asserts there was a verbal agreement to pay him even more, $28.4 million.) Alioto has collected only a $500,000 retainer and another $500,000-plus for expenses. But he’s filed a lien that has put $21.3 million of Hoiles’ stock-sale proceeds into escrow. Alioto says his threatened antitrust litigation against Freedom and his other efforts were critical to the stock sale. Hoiles accuses Alioto of misrepresentation and of demanding “illegal, unreasonable and unconscionable fees and expenses.” Hoiles says he wouldn’t have signed the contract if he’d known that Alioto had a history of fee disputes with clients, sanctions by the California bar and a law-license suspension. Hoiles contends Alioto’s contributions were minimal and even counter-productive; Hoiles, who once touted Alioto’s legal threats against Freedom, now says they “lacked merit.” And Hoiles asserts the contract only covered the shares in his name, while Alioto argues his 15% fee also applied to a smaller portion held by Hoiles’ ex-wife and two daughters,a $5 million difference. “Since I brokered this marriage, I’m very bothered by the divorce,” says one-time Freedom exec Joe Barletta, the Hoiles adviser who recruited Alioto Kevin Costner’s recent marriage to handbag designer Christine Baumgartner at his Aspen, Colo., ranch was officiated by Rev. Jeff Pries of Mariners Church, Newport Coast Westminster’s Little Saigon may soon have company in Silicon Valley, where the Vietnamese population almost matches OC’s nation-leading 200,000. There’s a movement to officially designate the Tully and King roads area in San Jose as Little Saigon … Happy 10th to RiechesBaird Exhaust fumes: At the OC Forum a few weeks ago, county Supe Tom Wilson greeted state Education Secretary Richard Riordan with, “I’d like to welcome you to Orange County.” “Where’s El Toro?” the pro-airport, former Los Angeles mayor shot back, to oohs and laughter. Erstwhile pro-airport gadfly Russell Niewiarowski has retreated to Gold’s Gym in Huntington Beach, where he trains under Milos Sarcev. Says Niewiarowski, “Bodybuilding is tough but it is far easier and more rewarding building a new body than attempting to build a new El Toro airport.”