Dive Brief:

• One of the country’s oldest department store chains on Friday won the latest round in a years-old battle against a developer that has shuttered the Maryland shopping mall where one of the chain's stores is located.

• A U.S. District Court jury awarded clothing retailer Lord & Taylor $31 million in lost profits in its lawsuit against real estate developers and mall owners Lerner Enterprises and The Tower Cos. The jury agreed that the developers took steps to begin redeveloping White Flint Mall in Montgomery County, MD, into a larger, mixed-use town center in violation of a 40-year-old contract that required the shopping center to operate as an enclosed mall until the department store’s lease expires in 2040.

• Lord & Taylor, the only store remaining at the site, once co-anchored the small mall with Bloomingdale's, which moved out in 2012.

Dive Insight:

Despite the financial hit, the courtroom loss could be just what the developers needed to get construction started on the new town center.

“The $31 million is a drop in the bucket for Lerner and Tower,” The Washington Business Journal reported on Friday after the jury announced its verdict. With the lawsuit out of the way and without the possibility of an injunction, they are free from the legal barrier that they said has prevented them from breaking ground on the project and signing new tenants.

It is unclear whether Lord & Taylor, which stubbornly remains open for business even though all of the mall’s other tenants have left, will continue to operate there during construction.

Still, the jury’s verdict in favor of the retailer should serve as a caution to other developers, The Journal said, “to be mindful of the terms of their tenant leases, even if those leases date back 40 years.”

Erica Leatham, real estate attorney at Ballard Spahr, told The Journal: "There is no doubt that developers and retailers were following the case very closely... I hope that it leads to more cooperation between developers and retailers in the future."