A New Orleans judge has ordered developer Mohan Kailas to stop harassing tenants at his 31-story skyscraper at 1010 Common St., which Kailas has been trying to vacate in order to make way for a renovation that he says will include two hotels.

On Thursday, Civil District Court Judge Nicole Sheppard issued a preliminary injunction ordering Kailas and anyone representing him to stop "extra-judicially disturbing" the attorneys at O'Bryon & Schnabel, one of just a handful of remaining tenants in the building.

Kailas is a major player in local real estate circles, having developed projects including the Four Winds Luxury Apartments on Baronne Street and the Kenner Plaza Shopping Center. He is also the majority owner of the company that was developing the Hard Rock Hotel which collapsed in October, killing three and injuring dozens of construction workers on the site.

The new court ruling was in response to a lawsuit brought by Kevin O'Bryon, senior partner at the firm, who alleged that Kailas had resorted to turning off heating, ventilation and air conditioning, stopping janitorial services, and other such measures in an effort to force his firm to move out.

O'Bryon's firm has rented space in the building for more than a decade and had planned to move out amicably. The firm had been paying month-to-month rent after its lease expired while it sought new office space.

However, correspondence between the two parties shows that things turned ugly late last year, with Kailas' firm trying to oust the remaining tenants so it could demolish the building's interior.

+26 At Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans, effort to redevelop this site has a troubled past The half-built Hard Rock Hotel in downtown New Orleans that partially collapsed Saturday morning was a long time in the making.

In November, Kailas' lawyer, Jay Harris, wrote to Marta-Ann Schnabel, the firm's managing director, warning that the firm would have to be out by year's end or see its rent more than double.

That deadline passed. But instead of proceeding with the normal legal measures to evict, the harassment began, O'Bryon alleges.

Harris didn't return calls or messages. Nor did Standard Hospitality, the Kailas-owned firm that markets 1010 Common.

In court filings, Harris had made a counterclaim against the O'Bryon firm for the higher rents he claimed were due, plus expenses of more than $100,000 covering the operation of the entire building. He alleged the law firm was the building's sole remaining tenant in January and thus should be responsible for those costs.

However, there were other tenants still occupying office space as of this week, including the law firm Jack & Harrison and Frederic Querens, an orthodontist.

Kailas bought the building, which sits at the intersection of Common and South Rampart streets, in 2014 for $16.6 million. The seller was Continental Common Inc., a subsidiary of Pillar Income Asset Management in Dallas.

The Class B office tower had struggled over the years to recover from the 2010 departure of municipal workers to the Benson Tower as part of a deal Saints owner Tom Benson made with the city to take over and renovate that building.

Kailas last year stopped marketing the building's office space.

On Loopnet.com, where the firm had advertised to prospective tenants, it put up a notice in November announcing: "The building is undergoing an exciting redevelopment with a future mixed use of updated modern office space, two hotels, and ground floor retail."

The building has about 512,000 square feet of space in its current form, with an attached 14-story parking garage containing 525 spaces.