Peace for Rob Weakley and David Bernahl, former Pebble Beach Food & Wine partners and litigious combatants.

It came with the first days of the new year, and remains one of the top three of 2015's 15 biggest Monterey County food-and-drink stories so far.

Easily.

David Bernahl and Rob Weakley, much-watched co-creators of Coastal Luxury Management, Pebble Beach Food & Wine, Restaurant 1833 and more, went from best friends to hurling bitter lawsuits and counter lawsuits at each other.

Now it's all behind them, savory times and salty ones alike.

First came the heady times, pulling PBF&W out of a top hat and blowing up with blockbuster food festivals and restaurants from there at such a furious pace conspiracy theories proliferated.

Then came turmoil last year leading into the lawsuit swamp.

The lawsuit legalese proved surprisingly feisty (words like "looting" and "malicious" abound) and typically tedious, but the short of it, in layman's terms, drawn from what I have gathered from court documents and some background reporting:

Weakley hoped to see his buyout money from a seeming amicable break (not so much the case, we know now) sooner so he could presumably pursue other projects, including one we now understand is both pioneering and massive: a huge gourmet medicinal chocolates operation based in Salinas called Altai.

So he sued Bernahl and his new partners for breach of contract.

But his role in a concurrent legal free-for-all between Coastal Luxury Management and their estranged partners in hip L.A. restaurant Faith & Flower—who wanted to keep working with Weakley—didn't leave Bernahl et al feeling too motivated to hurry money his way. 

In that mess, which ended in the sale of Faith & Flower to CLM, former partners Cindy and Jeff Troesh call Bernahl everything from a embezzler to fraud-monger and everything in between.

And, in a counter-suit, CLM alleges Weakley helped building owners doctor documents to help force out CLM.

Right around then CLM did not have its contract to manage ambitious Las Vegas club-restaurant Rose.Rabbit.Lie renewed. 

Insiders pointed to Weakley's closer relationship with certain R.R.L. power brokers helping cause the break; Bernahl holds it was a casualty of new ownership coming on line. 

Back in L.A., after countersuits from CLM and Bernahl and several victories in court, things found settlement and a 100-percent Coastal Luxury ownership for Faith & Flower. 

Around the same time, ahead of 2015's PBF&W, both Weakley's suit and Bernahl's counter suit were dropped.

Now, the former besties at least can dedicate more energy elsewhere besides their lawsuits.

Weakley will blaze away with Altai, which should announce a high-powered chef hire soon to oversee the production of fancy edibles expected to rival those at swanky restaurants.

Bernahl will continue to solidify his team after several departures (executive assistant Sarah Potter, corporate chef Levi Mezick among them) and additions (1833 Exec Chef Jason Franey, Bev Director Bernabe De Luna, to name two).

Bernahl used to be the voicebox for CLM and, by extension, Weakley.

No longer.

But he still sounds like he's speaking for both sides when he says, "We're excited to put a very public dispute behind us."