Rick's Steaks dealt setback on Reading Terminal dispute

Rick Olivieri has suffered a blow in his legal battle to keep his steak shop operating at the Reading Terminal Market.

But Olivieri's lawyer said yesterday that a court ruling dismissing most of Olivieri's claims against Reading Terminal is just a bump in the road that will be overcome at trial this summer.

"We're confident that when [the judge] eventually hears the case, that Rick will stay there," said attorney Bill Harvey.

Common Pleas Judge Mark I. Bernstein last week ruled that Olivieri and Rick's Steaks had failed to prove that management of the market had verbally promised him a new lease.

The market denies it offered Olivieri a new lease and is proceeding with its own lawsuit seeking Rick's Steaks' eviction from the historic Center City location at 12th and Arch streets.

Rick's claims that Olivieri had entered into an oral, month-to-month contract with terminal management while hammering out a new long-term lease.

Rick's maintains that an agreement on all the material terms of the new, permanent lease had been reached when Rick's was ordered last June to vacate the market by the end of July.

Rick's also named its perspective replacement tenant at the market, Tony Luke's, in its lawsuit.

Judge Bernstein ruled in an order issued Feb. 20 that Rick's Steaks failed to provide evidence in its lawsuit, filed July 30, of terminal-market-management misdeeds, including breach of oral contract, fraud and failure to negotiate in good faith.

Bernstein said that although Rick's Steaks said an agreement on the "material terms" of a new long-term lease had been reached, Rick's never detailed what those lease terms were, either in number of years or in rental amount.

Bernstein also said that Tony Luke's had done nothing wrong.

He did allow Rick's complaint that Olivieri had suffered monetary damages because of the alleged breach of the oral contract to go forward, but proof of actual loss is required to be detailed in further proceedings.

Larry Woehrle, the Reading Terminal Market's attorney, said yesterday that the market's board of directors "is obviously pleased with any decision by the court which terminates any of Rick's Steaks claims, which we've always viewed as baseless."

Trial is scheduled for June 2. *