Both Sides Strive to Avoid Appeals in Big Rock Case

Now that the owners of landslide-damaged homes at Malibu’s Big Rock Mesa have won one judgment each against the state and Los Angeles County, attorneys for everyone involved are at the negotiating table.

The lawyers are attempting to avoid lengthy appeals of the cases and more than 200 related lawsuits that could add up to a liability of $200 million to $500 million for various public agencies and insurance companies.

“Everybody was hellbent to try the first cases, but now everybody’s willing to consider a way out,” said David B. Casselman, who represents the county.

But ending the complex litigation won’t be easy.

Lawyers for about 220 Big Rock families said $151 million will buy all of the homes, allowing their clients to drop their lawsuits and move on to new lives elsewhere. The county and state are studying that proposal, but the county prefers a different settlement.

Stabilization Proposed

The county has suggested that it, along with other Big Rock defendants (the state, insurance companies and various public agencies) stabilize the slide area, as recommended by experts on both sides of the dispute. The defendants also would provide low-cost loans for repairs and guarantee insurance for prospective home buyers at the mesa.

The lawsuits accuse the state and county of responsibility for a massive 1983 landslide that was fueled by rising ground water. The slide cracked walls, floors, driveways, tennis courts and the winding roads of the affluent neighborhood. About 30 homes were condemned by the county as unsafe and the value of the others plunged.

Parts of the landslide are still moving, according to a 1986 geologist’s report commissioned by the county.

In October, 1985, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered the county to pay more than $2 million to Margaret and August Hansch, a Big Rock couple whose home was destroyed.

The county has argued that the residents caused the slide because they stopped operating a private drainage system.

But Judge Jack T. Ryburn decided after a 2 1/2-month trial that the county was “in the best position to assess the risk involved” in allowing construction on the mesa’s ancient landslide with seepage pits rather than sewers, and “it must now bear the loss when damage occurs.”

Suit Against State

Ryburn dismissed the Hansches’ suit against the state. But two months ago, in a case of 12 other Big Rock homeowners, a jury found that the state Department of Transportation contributed to the slide by making highway cuts into the hillside and by failing to object to the county’s approval of development, despite a 1959 state study that recommended no construction there.

The county has appealed the Hansch case. Caltrans cannot appeal the judgment in the other case until after a trial to determine damages, which is scheduled to begin June 15.

Earlier efforts to settle the litigation were rebuffed, said the homeowners’ attorneys, Kenneth R. Chiate and Richard D. Norton. “Everybody said there’s no interest,” Chiate said. “At one time, $100 million would have settled the case, but once Hansch was won, the price . . . went up.”

After the most recent verdict, “there was a feeling among both the county and (the state) that we don’t want to spend years and years in litigation,” said Anthony Ruffolo, deputy chief counsel for the Southern California region of Caltrans.

For the county, “even a victory on appeal is going to bring more litigation,” Casselman said. The homeowners “are going to try more cases and if they ever win one, then it’s going to go back up on appeal. When all the appeals are over, everybody has lost.”

$151-Million Offer

The $151-million offer from the Big Rock residents would cover the pre-slide value of their homes and attorney fees. The families have dropped requests for interest and the amount that their homes would have appreciated in value since 1983 if the slide had not occurred. They “are discounting their potential recovery by a third,” Chiate said.

If the county buys Big Rock Mesa, Chiate said, the land could be used for parks, beach parking lots, restaurants or riding trails. “After they stabilize it, if they stabilize it, they’ve got estates to market,” he said.

But Casselman said the county is “not interested in making large cash payments that suggest that the county is responsible” for the damage.

Added Casselman: “We are not particularly interested in being land developers. We want to revitalize the area and put these homeowners back in the position they were in.”

The entire repair package “would cost as much or more than the $151 million,” Casselman said. He said the county made the repair offer because “appropriately, county government entities do step in and help.”

Commanding Views

To Big Rock homeowners, who moved to the mesa for its commanding views of mountains and sea, “the best of all possible worlds would be to let them do what they say they can do . . . use all the latest technology to stop the slide, and everybody could stay here,” said Margaret Richards, a 10-year resident. Richards is president of Concerned Citizens for Water Control, a committee of Big Rock families who banded together after the slide to limit further damage.

But Richards added that many of her neighbors do not believe the county can or will stop the slide, especially since promises to help solve the problem with improved drainage have gone unfulfilled for three years.

“What happens if five years from now we have another landslide? That opens up the whole litigation all over again,” Richards said.

In the meantime, she added, “it’s terribly divisive for people on the hill. Everyone’s asking, ‘Would you go? Would you stay?’ ”