First of 2 Big Rock Slide Trials Under Way

Los Angeles County ignored its own geologist’s warning that Big Rock Mesa in Malibu was sitting on an ancient landslide and approved development there despite the potential peril to residents, one of the homeowners’ attorneys told a Superior Court jury Wednesday.

“The county knew it was a recipe for disaster,” attorney Charles Patterson said during opening statements to the jury. “Yet the (county) officials kept quiet about the imminent danger and issued more permits to build more homes.”

Patterson said that even as the reactivated landslide began to eat away at the 200-foot bluffs and parts of Pacific Coast Highway, county officials blocked a letter from another geologist warning Big Rock Mesa property owners of the danger “because the county was more concerned with their own liability than the safety of its citizens.”

However, David Casselman, an attorney for the county, denied the charge, arguing that the county had no reason to suppress information. In fact, he said, the homeowners knew about the landslide before the county because it was first discovered by a private engineer hired by the homeowners.

Contentions Differ

“Mostly, this is a case about personal responsibility and the roles of government in our lives,” Casselman told the jury. “Virtually every one of the plaintiffs’ claims is based on a twisting of the facts. In over 20 years, not one single geologist ever reported to the county that the mesa was unsafe. And the county had every reason to believe that Big Rock Mesa was safe.”

The long-awaited trial, beset by years of delays, involves seven elderly Big Rock Mesa homeowners who are suing the county for losses they suffered during a massive 1983 landslide that damaged or demolished 250 hillside homes.

The trial for the seven plaintiffs over 70 years old was separated from the upcoming Big Rock Mesa mega-trial to spare them several more years of litigation. Their trial is a precursor to the trial for the other 250 Malibu property owners, which is expected to be one of the biggest and longest civil trials in U.S. history.

That trial, scheduled to begin Feb. 15 in Los Angeles, will require the largest courtroom in the United States, with more than 275 attorneys involved and more than $300 million in claims and counterclaims at stake. It is expected to last between two and five years.

Hillside Area

The homeowners are suing the county for allowing seepage pits and horizontal drains rather than sewers to be used in development of the hillside area above Pacific Coast Highway about two miles west of Topanga Canyon.

They claim that the county’s action contributed to a rise of nearly 200 feet in ground water, which triggered the landslide on Big Rock Mesa five years ago. The slide cracked walls, floors, driveways, tennis courts and the winding roads in the affluent neighborhood.

About 30 homes were condemned by the county as unsafe, and the value of the others, many of them in the $1-million price range, plummeted.

The county claims that the homeowners were to blame for the huge slide because they did not drain water from the mesa and that they contributed to the slide by using septic tanks, showers and toilets and voted down several ballot measures to build sewers in Malibu.

Seeking $6 Million

The elderly homeowners are seeking up to $6 million from the county for the damage to their homes. The decision in their trial, which is expected to last as long as three months, will have no effect on the massive trial for the remaining Big Rock homeowners.

Attorneys on both sides of the case blame each other for the lengthy delays in the case. Two of the elderly homeowners, including actor-producer John Houseman, have died in the last year.

No final decision has been made on where the courtroom for the Big Rock trial will be held. Superior Court Judge Maurice R. Hogan Jr. said the downtown Embassy Hotel auditorium is now the preferred site.