Sep. 27—A local table grape grower won a round last week in his legal fight to halt the proposed sale of a Bakersfield grape breeding company he co-owns.

A private arbitration panel set up to help resolve Jack Pandol's lawsuit against International Fruit Genetics LLC issued a preliminary injunction Sept. 18 that could stall the company's proposed sale to a Spanish conglomerate.

Pandol said by email Monday that the decision will delay IFG's asset sale to SNFL Investments LLC — a subsidiary of Spanish conglomerate AM Fresh and its minority partner in the deal, Swedish investment firm EQT Future — until April at the soonest.

The decision is the latest development in a high-stakes, two-lawsuit court battle between Pandol and IFG.

In March, Pandol sued IFG, saying that because of the proposed sale, he was in danger of being unfairly denied his rights as a 25-percent owner of the company.

Then in July, IFG sued him and his Shafter-based company, Grapery, saying they had misappropriated trade secrets as part of a plan to compete with the company using an unfair market advantage.

A copy of this month's injunction decision was not available Monday. Although the arbitration stems from a lawsuit Pandol filed against IFG publicly on March 16 in Kern County Superior Court, arbitration proceedings are considered private. Both sides agreed Monday to discuss the decision, but neither would share a copy of the arbitration panel's written decision.

"It is crystal clear (the delay will hold) until the end of arbitration, which is scheduled to go until at least sometime in April," Pandol wrote.

IFG called the injunction a "procedural and temporary arbitration ruling" but declined to address how it might affect the timetable for the proposed sale.

"We remain confident in the merits of our case and are pleased the arbitrator is giving this issue due attention," the company said in a statement, emphasizing that the injunction will not affect the service it delivers to customers.

Neither party would say how the delay might help or harm prospects for IFG's ultimate sale.

Pandol's lawsuit accuses IFG's other co-founders, the Stoller family, of trying to proceed with a sale of the company without his consent. He maintains that SNFL's purchase would likely cut him out of his contractual right to one-quarter of the company's product innovations.

An injunction issued in the case in July sent his suit to the arbitration panel that issued last week's decision.

IFG's suit alleges Pandol and Grapery, exclusive marketer of the Cotton Candy grapes, used their access to proprietary data to launch a competing fruit-breeding operation without having made the necessary investment of costly and time-consuming research.

In summer of 2021, IFG received a third-party purchase offer that led it to initiate an auction of the company. As part of that process, Grapery was permitted to review confidential information about IFG's varietals, pricing and sales volume.

Grapery denied benefiting from IFG's proprietary information, though it has acknowledged working to set up its own grape-breeding operation.