Family gets minor victory in Hilltop beef

SAUGUS – Entrenched in a battle over respect, legacy and free food, the family of Hilltop Steakhouse founder Frank Giuffrida is celebrating a minor legal victory over the restaurant’s latest owners this month, but the fight over a decades-old agreement is far from over.
Giuffrida’s widow, Irene, and two daughters have been fighting with the restaurant’s owner, High Country Investor Inc., since the company took control of the Route 1 property in 2004, shortly after Giuffrida’s death at the age of 86.
The family claims High Country has refused to continue a longstanding agreement that the Giuffrida family and guests could eat at the restaurant for free whenever they wanted, and be given top priority for tables and service on busy nights.
The agreement was originally made in 1988 when Giuffrida sold the iconic restaurant that he founded in 1961. He kept control of the land and the building, leasing it to the new owners with the understanding that his family and friends would be treated as royalty, and would be a “top priority,” not just another customer in the steak empire that he had built.
The agreement remained in place even as the company was sold again to High Country Investors Inc. in 1997, but problems began to surface in 2004, when High Country exercised a right to take control of the land and building after Giuffrida’s death.
Once the deal was finalized, High Country informed the Giuffrida family that the sale of the land voided their original 1988 agreement, and they were no longer allowed what they had thought were “lifetime” privileges.
According to court documents, tension between the family and High Country officials Dennis January and Richard Monfort began almost immediately after Giuffrida’s 2003 death when the pair began an effort to exercise the company’s right to buy the Hilltop outright, including the land.
As the process continued, High Country began to pressure the family to close the deal by March 2004, and threatened that the family’s privileges may be in trouble if they did not comply.
According to the court papers, the Giuffrida family did not include the agreement in any sort of contract, believing that it was “etched in stone,” a decision that proved to be damning when the case came before a judge in Essex County Superior Court last year.
That judge ruled to uphold the decision without a trial, effectively ending the family’s run of hearty eating at their home away from home.
But an appeals court gave the family new life this week, ruling that while High Country was not obligated to comply with the agreement since the lease was terminated, the family does have the right to a trial to determine whether the current owners deceived them into thinking that the agreement would remain, even though they intended to terminate it.
The family lawyer, Paul Samson, could not be reached for comment Wednesday, was quoted in published reports that the family was “disappointed” in High Country’s antics and that it “hurts the memory of their father.”