Jail Term to Be Sought Against Developer in Destruction of Benedict Canyon Oaks

City Atty. James Hahn said Wednesday that he will seek jail time for a developer accused of destroying scores of 50- to 100-year-old protected oak trees in Benedict Canyon to build a luxury home.

Since the City Council decided in a 1980 ordinance to protect the Valley Oak and California Live Oak, only one other defendant has been charged under its provisions, according to the city attorney’s office. This is the first time jail time will be sought.

Michael Miklenda, 38, operator of Miklenda Construction Corp. of Beverly Hills was accused of twice violating the city’s so-called Oak Tree Law within six months in the chain saw and bulldozer destruction of 50 oak trees on a 4 1/2-acre site at 4737 Oak Pass Road.

“We are going to be asking for jail time because we think this is an outrageous violation of the law,” Hahn declared at a press conference. “We are going to also demand that trees be replaced.”

But in Miklenda’s case, according to Hahn, the developer “knew what he was doing was against the law” when 36 California Live Oaks were bulldozed in September because he also had been charged and arraigned in May with the chain saw destruction of 14 oaks the previous month.

Denies Defiance of Law

Miklenda’s attorneys--one who represents him in the criminal case filed in May and another who advised him on real estate matters--denied that he felled the trees in defiance of the law.

“He is very distressed about finding himself viewed as a scofflaw,” said Howard Roy Schechter, Miklenda’s criminal attorney. “He is a super law-and-order type.”

Schechter said that Miklenda did not know that the oak tree ordinance applied to the Oak Pass Road property when he removed trees there in April. The ordinance applies to properties larger than one acre, but Miklenda’s other developments were all less than one acre and “it didn’t occur to him,” that the larger development meant a new set of rules, Schechter said.

“This is a comedy of errors,” he said. “It shows two things: what happens when you have to apply to seven different bureaucracies simultaneously, and how laws like these get people swept up in a criminal process whether they knew about what they were doing or not.”

Eugene Gratz, Miklenda’s real estate attorney, said his client thought he had permission to remove the second batch of trees in September because the city had issued him a preliminary grading permit.

Advice to Miklenda Told

Deputy City Atty. Steve Tekosky, who is prosecuting Miklenda, insisted, however, that when Miklenda was arraigned on the initial charge in April he was told that oak trees could not be cut or removed without approval by the City Department of Public Works.

And when Miklenda applied to the Department of Building and Safety for a grading permit, Tekosky charged that Miklenda had declared that there were no trees on the property.

Any errors on forms completed by Miklenda occurred because of language problems, not as part of any intentional effort to deceive the city, his attorneys said. They said Miklenda is a native of Czechoslovakia and often has difficulty with English.

In a previous case, according to city attorney spokesman Mike Qualls, the Encino-based Jasin Co. was fined $1,000, required to pay $10,000 into a trust fund and spend approximately $20,000 to replace four oak trees destroyed at 21826 Lassen St. in Chatsworth.

Hahn declared that his office is dedicated in “moving in a responsible way” to protect the “beautiful oak-covered hillsides” and not see them gradually cleared away to make room for development.