In the past week, federal bankruptcy judge Ronald A. Clifford III found himself once again wrestling with what to do about the smoldering remains of the former Santa Barbara News-Press and all the unresolved claims made against that paper and its embattled owner Wendy P. McCaw.
McCaw will be demanding a change of venue from the downtown bankruptcy court — a building she happens to own—because there had been talk this past August of some building tenants of withholding rent to McCaw because they were upset the air conditioning system gave out for eight days during a particularly hot spell. The judge in the case was initially upset that McCaw had come to have access to such in-house communications, but then it emerged that the minutes of such conversations had been forwarded to McCaw’s real estate attorneys as a matter of course.
Should McCaw prevail in this latest motion, the judge made it clear, a change of venue would mean the case may have to be heard somewhere outside the Central Court district lines. Those lines extend from San Luis Obispo to Irvine and Riverside. The point seemed to be that any such change would be hugely inconvenient for all parties involved. Nonetheless, he set the motion to change venue for March 11, 2026…