Eviction Reins In a Critic of Public Equestrian Center

Linda Shue has boarded her 8-year-old horse, Talouse, for two years at the Huntington Central Park Equestrian Center. It has hardly been a happy relationship.

Shue was one of several horse owners who went to the Huntington Beach City Council last year to protest rent increases. They also complained that the equestrian center’s private operators were showing favoritism among boarders and restricting access to certain areas of the facility, which is on city-owned park property.

Since then, an audit has been ordered, a grievance committee has been established and a set of rules spelling out who is entitled to use what has been written.

And Linda Shue is being evicted.

Her attorney contends that the action is being taken because Shue has been one of the most vocal critics of the equestrian center’s management. Shue and other discontented equestrians at the center have “subjected (the operators) to a great deal of scrutiny” by Huntington Beach city officials, attorney Marvin Mayer of Orange said. But ex-jockey Eddie Milligan, Mary Harris and her father, Bill Harris, the partners of National Equestrian Centers Inc., which holds a 25-year lease with the city to operate the 25-acre facility, contend that Shue is being evicted solely because her riding has endangered others at the center.

Shue has ridden the wrong direction in arenas, against the flow of traffic, and has ridden her horse too close to oncoming horses--a breach of equestrian etiquette that can spook the animals and cause riders to be thrown, according to testimony by trainers and others at the equestrian center during Shue’s recent eviction hearing in Municipal Court. Others testified that Shue has ridden in arenas where she was not allowed, disrupting lessons and then refusing to leave when asked.

“The problem is not what she does outside the facility. It’s what she does inside the facility,” said the equestrian center’s attorney, Mark Rosen of Santa Ana. “The fact that she has complained to the city does not immunize her behavior at the center.”

Municipal Judge Jonathan Cannon ruled last week in favor of the equestrian center, finding that the eviction was not retaliation.

Shue plans to appeal.

Shue, 27, a sales representative for a major microcomputer parts firm, denies that she is an unsafe rider. She said she has been on horses since she was 9 years old and is considered an intermediate-level rider, one step below professional. Further, her attorney said, she is respected enough by fellow boarders to be elected as a representative to the city’s Equestrian Center Committee, of which she is vice chairwoman.

Shue has been harassed at the equestrian center, Mayer said. Her horse was not fed for three days after Shue gave a deposition in her case, he said. Once, Shue’s horse was spooked and she was thrown to the ground, seconds after Milligan’s son yelled at her. (He denied spooking the horse and said Shue fell because the animal did not have the proper gear.)

“She has been singled out,” Mayer said. He and Shue believe that the equestrian center’s management figures that if Shue leaves, other discontented boarders will quietly follow.

But Rosen, the equestrian center’s attorney, said there is no conspiracy. “She would dramatize an incident out of proportion,” he said.

Shue is not the only rider who has brought her concerns to City Hall, but there are no plans to evict the others, Rosen said. “We’ve not had this problem with any other boarders. . . . Linda Shue is the first and only (eviction) of this facility.”

The Huntington Beach City Council drafted a set of rules establishing eviction procedures and determining that only three arenas are to be set aside for training and jumping, Councilwoman Grace Winchell said.

“This is a community facility, for the public’s benefit, so it is up to the City Council to make sure there are rules that are fair and equitable,” Winchell said.

Because of continuing complaints that Milligan does not deal with boarders evenhandedly, the City Council established the Equestrian Center Committee to hear grievances and try to work out compromises, she said.

“We’re getting these complaints from far more than two, three or four people,” Winchell said. “We were being barraged by individual complaints. This way complaints go through this process.”

Winchell hopes that the Equestrian Center Committee evolves into more than a grievance board and that a spirit of cooperation grows. “It’s a lovely facility. I’m so proud of the way it looks. But if people can’t go there and enjoy themselves, it’s for naught.”