YOUNGSTOWN - The owner and six residents of the California Palms Addiction Recovery Center have been dealt a setback in their efforts to get back into the Austintown facility now under control of a Los Angeles investment firm.

Mahoning County Court Magistrate Timothy Welsh on Monday denied a motion for a preliminary injunction sought by the former Palms residents against Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene, whose deputies evicted the residents on April 21, turning ownership of the facility to Pender Capital due to $4 million debt.

In issuing the denial, Magistrate Welsh noted that California Palms still has a case pending before the Seventh District Court of Appeals.

The attorney for the former Palms residents had argued that the order allowing eviction was invalid because it had been signed by a clerk instead of a judge.

Former Palms owner, Attorney Sebastian Rucci, told 21 News earlier that he expected to be back inside last week.

In Monday’s ruling, Magistrate Welsh stated that the case has had a “tortured and storied procedural history.”

Rucci renamed the building at Route 46 and Interstate 80 the Hotel California in 2015.

When that venture failed, Rucci turned the hotel into a 200-bed addiction recovery center in 2017.

But the state terminated his certification to run it as a treatment center.

A plethora of court cases and legal files later, Pender Capital out of California bought the hotel at sheriff's sale in April of 2021. Rucci filed for bankruptcy which allowed residents to stay at the hotel.

Rucci tells 21 News he paid the lender $500,000 as a down payment last year.

Magistrate Welsch scheduled a court hearing on May 25 to hear a motion by the Sheriff to dismiss the resident’s case against his department.