A Multnomah County judge on Tuesday declined to block the sale of Alpenrose Dairy to a Seattle-area competitor.

But the previously announced sale still isn’t certain.

Circuit Judge Jerry B. Hodson ordered two warring sides of the family that owns Alpenrose and Smith Brothers Farms, the prospective buyer, into mediation. He also left the door open to continued legal action, which could push the family members to find common ground.

He ruled immediately after hearing closing arguments and grew emotional as he addressed the family owners, a faction of which had filed the suit to stop the sale and had mounted its own bid to buy the dairy.

“It’s been sad listening to this case," Hodson said. "Take a minute and step back and think a minute about how you’ve lost sight of what it means to be a family.”

The case had attracted widespread attention because the century-old dairy has a longstanding practice of making its land available for community activities. Little League teams use ball fields on dairy property and the land also includes bicycle and quarter-midget auto racing tracks and an opera house used for community theater productions.

The three siblings who sought to buy the dairy — part-owners and great-great-grandchildren of its founder — had accused family members who supported the sale to Smith Brothers Farms of seeking to block community activities on the land. Another family company would retain the land in the proposed sale.

They said their relatives who wanted to sell to an outside company aimed to subsequently sell the “community lands” for redevelopment, which could net millions. Those relatives denied the claim in testimony.

The siblings — Cary Cadonau, Tracy Cadonau McKinnon and Carl Cadonau III — accused the family members who control the company of dismissing their offer out of spite and in breach of their fiduciary duty to the company’s shareholders.

The siblings argued their offer to buy out their relatives was financially superior to the Smith Brothers offer to buy the dairy’s assets rather than the company’s stock.

Hodson declined to place a temporary injunction on the sale and said the siblings were unlikely to win a lengthier trial with that argument. He said their offer was less attractive than the Smith Brothers offer and that the company they formed to buy the dairy likely didn’t have standing to claim a breach of fiduciary duty because it was not a shareholder.

Family members and other observers in the room appeared to fight back tears as the ruling was announced. Employees and representatives of community groups that had used the Alpenrose facilities attended the proceedings, filling the small courtroom during opening arguments.

Over five days, family members traded accusations, each side saying the other had sabotaged the company for selfish or vindictive reasons.

The siblings who wanted to buy the dairy said they’d made offers in response to solicitations from their cousins, brothers Rod and Wendell Birkland. But they said those offers were then dismissed out of hand.

The Birklands and the siblings’ aunts, Anita Cadonau Huseby and Barbara Deeming, were the controlling board members of the dairy who supported the sale. The siblings’ father, Carl Cadonau Jr., was the sole board member opposed to the sale and had financially backed the competing bid.

Attorneys for the four who wanted to sell said the Cadonau siblings were simply trying to upend a sale to Smith Brothers and didn’t intend to close on their own deal. They said the proposals lacked specific terms and information about where they would get the money.

They also accused the siblings of deceiving community members with the claim of pending redevelopment. And they said they siblings — along with their father, Carl Cadonau Jr., the Alpenrose board member and former co-president — had undermined the company from within.

They pointed to the premature disclosure of the dairy’s proposed sale in August, which occurred after Cadonau McKinnon distributed a public relations plan for announcing the sale to employees. Her husband, Bryce McKinnon, an Alpenrose manager, had taken the plan from Rod Birkland’s desk, testimony showed.

And they pointed to another lawsuit filed earlier this year by the siblings, which had scuttled a prior attempted sale to Smith Brothers.

The judge ultimately ruled largely without wading into the accusations of bad behavior, but he said he hoped the family could find a way to heal its fractious relationships.

“Neither side is free from blame in this,” he said.

Dustin Highland, the CEO of Smith Brothers, said after the ruling that the judge’s decision left the sale uncertain. He and the controlling Alpenrose owners had previously hoped to close the deal this week.

“I think we need to go back and regroup," he said.

Cary Cadonau deferred questions to the attorney for his siblings and him. The attorney, Jonathan Radmacher, said he had heard the judge’s plea to find a different route than immediately pursuing more litigation.

“I’m going to take his encouragement to heart, and I’m sure my clients will as well," he said.

-- Elliot Njus