Landslide Damage to La Habra Subdivision : 200 Homeowners Settle for $4 Million From Lusk Co.

More than 200 La Habra homeowners agreed to settlements Friday totaling $4 million from the Lusk Co. for landslide damage to their subdivision in 1979, 1981 and 1983.

The agreement settled a class-action lawsuit on behalf of owners of 212 homes in the Country Hills East development of view homes, built in 1972.

Four insurers for Country Hills Inc., a Lusk firm, agreed to the payments to end the litigation filed in 1981.

“I was coming home from a trip in the middle of a rainstorm,” said John Koslov, the lawyer for the residents who himself owned a home in the subdivision.

“The slopes had turned into muck, which was running down the hill,” Koslov said. “The slopes turned into a muddy soup and just flowed down the hill.”

Earlier this year, Lusk used money it received from the soil engineer for the project, Converse Consultants, to pay a $700,000 settlement with the Country Hills East Homeowners’ Assn. in a separate but related case, according to Theodore R. Howard, lawyer for Lusk.

Howard said all three slides resulted from heavy rains. The slopes were engineered in accordance with the Uniform Building Code adopted by the City of La Habra, Howard said.

“The allegations were basically that the project was defectively designed and fabricated,” Howard said. The suit claimed that Lusk was liable for damages regardless of whether it was negligent in the construction.

Koslov, who lived through two of the slides before moving out, said homes were not structurally damaged.

“The slope failures were shallow failures, with no more than three or four feet of the surface of the slope giving way,” Koslov said. “All that was physically damaged were the slopes themselves, along with landscaping and irrigation and drainage channels.”

“Our claim against Lusk was that the slope problems on some of the lots had a detrimental effect on the market value of all the homes in the subdivision,” Koslov said.

Koslov and Howard agreed that Lusk had engineered the slopes in conformity with then-existing regulations of the steepness of the hillsides. Koslov said the local ordinance has been revised since the slides, further limiting the permissible angle of slopes.

Howard said the Lusk Co. is “extremely concerned about the problems of slope failures” and “takes great pride in the products it sells.”

The subdivision has been repaired. “Actually, it looks pretty nice. It’s very attractive,” Koslov said.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Jerrold S. Oliver, who presided over the settlement negotiations, still must approve a plan for dividing the $4 million among the individual homeowners.