Contractors to Settle Laguna Village Claims
Several dozen contractors accused of faulty design and construction work at a Laguna Hills residential complex tentatively agreed Monday to pay several million dollars to settle claims of negligence against them, averting a potentially costly and lengthy trial.
Details of the agreement are to emerge today in Superior Court in Santa Ana, when the deal is made public. But sources close to the case confirmed that payments to the Laguna Village Owners Assn.--representing more than 900 homeowners--will total at least several million dollars.
One lawyer placed the total settlement package at “close to $5 million.”
Judge Jerrold S. Oliver, who oversaw almost three days of last-minute negotiations in the dispute, said in an interview: “A tentative settlement has been reached and we expect it to be perfected (Tuesday).”
The settlement, coming just a month before the 5-year-old dispute was to go to trial, avoids the prospect of Superior Court administrators having to spend from $50,000 to $70,000 to redesign Oliver’s court with a new seating and sound system to accommodate the complex trial, the judge said.
More than five dozen lawyers representing the many construction industry defendants in the case would have assembled in Oliver’s courtroom for a trial that could have lasted 18 months.
Oliver said he was glad to see the case resolved before trial.
“Everyone had given up hope (on a settlement), but we were able to hash it out,” the judge said. “Good attorneys recognize that they should not have to devote 18 months of their lives to a case like this one, because it would have been so complex and so expensive.”
The dispute centered on complaints by homeowners at the residential site, located at Ridge Route and Santa Victoria drives in Laguna Hills, that the main contractor for the project--Laguna Village Inc.--and its many subcontractors had made serious errors in the design and construction of the facility, particularly in roofing and drainage.
Plans for the residential complex started in 1976, and the last of the 914 two-story units were completed around 1987, according to owners association manager Jim McKirchy.
He and attorneys involved in the case declined to discuss details of the complaints or of the tentative settlement.
Raymond Hamrick, an attorney for Celtic Construction Inc. of Orange County--one of the subcontractors named as defendants in the lawsuit--said the settlement was not an acknowledgement of liability by any of the defendants. Rather, he said, it was was aimed at “avoiding going to trial and taking the risk of getting hurt” by a large jury award.
