A lawsuit filed by the owners of L.A. County’s oldest continuously operating restaurant, which accuses a well-known local family of stealing their property, is now expected back in court in November, according to court filings.  The Mercado family, which ran the Original Saugus Cafe until December, filed a lawsuit claiming Louise Arklin and a company set up in her interest, North Valley Construction Corp., forced them out of the restaurant and denied them any compensation.  Alfredo Mercado worked for years as a bartender at the Old Saugus Cafe, before buying the restaurant from its previous owner and changing the name.  The lawsuit alleges that, when the Mercado family let their landlord, Larry Goodman, know they might want to sell it, they were forced to sign an onerous lease and then had the locks changed on them.   “Plaintiffs allege that defendants unlawfully interfered with plaintiffs’ restaurant business and tenancy by breaching lease agreements, effectuating a wrongful lockout and removal of property, misappropriating plaintiffs’ trade name and goodwill engaging in unfair competition, trademark infringement, fraud, conversion and related business torts, resulting in substantial damages,” according to the case management statement prepared by Steffanie Stelnick, the Mercados’ attorney.  In a previous interview, Goodman said the family didn’t have any ownership rights to the restaurant.  For North Valley Construction Corp., the case statement filed by attorney Aaron Levine read: “The action arises from a business dispute involving a restaurant previously operated by Alfredo Mercado and The Original Saugus Cafe, LLC. Plaintiff claims damages no less than $1,000,000, restitution and disgorgement of monies, recovery of personal property or the value thereof, and injunctive relief.”  Questions also remain as far as what people should now call the restaurant being run at 25861 Railroad Ave.   A search on Google still brings up “The Original Saugus Cafe,” for that address, which was the name Alfredo Mercado claimed ownership of; the menus inside the restaurant during a recent trip said “Saugus Restaurant”; and a restaurant website with a January registry, SaugusCafeSCV.com, welcomes people to the “Saugus Cafe,” which claims to have been in business for almost 140 years.  The website recognizes part of the cache of the “Original Saugus Cafe” — which has its decades-old sign displayed on the site — is the restaurant’s inimitable history, dating back to its founding in 1888 alongside the Saugus Train Station. Local lore includes a visit by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, and William Mulholland, the man responsible for the San Francisquito Dam disaster, the following year.  After it moved across the tracks to its current location on Railroad Avenue in 1916, D.W. Griffith, Doug Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin were all reported to have eaten there, according to SCVhistory.com. Famed big-screen cowboys Harry Carey, Hoot Gibson and, of course, William S. Hart, were known to be regulars.    An effort to federally trademark The Original Saugus Cafe, which was filed by North Valley Construction one day before Mercado signed his new lease, ultimately was abandoned in May, according to online records with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The reason given was a failure to respond to a request from the USPTO in a timely manner.  The latest challenge by North Valley Construction is asking the court for a judicial notice, which asks the judge for a formal review of the original pleadings of the case against the amended complaint and exhibits.  A hearing on the judge’s notice is scheduled for November.  The post Saugus cafe saga continues in court appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal. ...read more read less