City of Ontario v. City of Los Angeles, et al. (Case No. RIC 1306498)

The City of Los Angeles (LA) owned and operated the Ontario International Airport. The City of Ontario filed suit claiming that LA breached its obligation to exercise best efforts to attract air service to Ontario’s airport, instead favoring its own Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Ontario claimed that the breach caused damages of $2-3 billion. Retained on behalf of the City of LA to evaluate the reasonableness of these claims, Mr. Chodorow concluded that, if LA did breach its obligations, Ontario’s actual losses were a small fraction of those claimed and that the vast majority of losses suffered by Ontario were caused by the 2008 Financial Crisis, not the alleged breach. The case settled just before trial with Ontario paying $190 million to acquire the airport, but with no payment by LA for the claimed damages. The dispute was widely covered in the press, including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.