Court Ruling Endangers Jake Egan’s Muffler Shop : Torrance: A Superior Court judge says the city can condemn the property by eminent domain. Egan says he’ll appeal.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has thrown a wrench into Jake Egan’s efforts to keep his muffler shop in front of Torrance’s biggest redevelopment project.

In a notice to attorneys, Judge Loren Miller Jr. last week said that Torrance may begin condemnation proceedings against Egan’s Aable Muffler Shop, despite a 1983 agreement by the city’s Redevelopment Agency not to try to take the land.

The red, white and blue muffler shop sits on the corner of Cabrillo Avenue and Torrance Boulevard--one of the city’s busiest intersections and also directly in front of Honda North America’s sparkling new 101-acre headquarters complex.

Despite the ruling, Walter J. (Jake) Egan insists that he and his little shop will remain right where they are.

Unless, of course, either the city or Honda wants to pay him $1.8 million to leave.

“I’ve told them before, that’s what it would take to get me set up at a place near enough to here that I won’t lose my customers and as visible as this place is,” he said Thursday.

Honda spokesman Kurt Antonius laughed loudly when told the figure.

“For that 50-by-25-foot piece of land? I don’t know if the whole site cost that much,” he said.

Honda Facilities Manager Anthony Piazza said the company does not care whether Egan stays or goes.

“We’ll just landscape around him,” Piazza said. “It’s fine with us if he wants to stay there. This whole thing is between him and the city.”

The city has made no secret of its desire to acquire Egan’s land.

First, the Torrance Redevelopment Agency declared the shop part of a blighted area and designated it for inclusion in the site eventually sold to Honda.

Egan sued the agency and the city, nearly derailing the Honda deal.

To get him to drop his suit, the agency agreed to exempt his land from the redevelopment area, and the city paid Egan’s lawyers $27,000.

Then, in 1987, the city announced plans to widen and straighten Torrance Boulevard, in part by taking 18 feet off the front of Egan’s land. The slice would go right through two of his outdoor hydraulic repair racks.

Egan sued the city for fraud. That suit is pending.

But in a separate action, the city asked Miller to rule on whether it still had the right to take Egan’s land through eminent domain.

According to Alexander Early, a retired judge hired by the city to handle the case, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that cities may not relinquish their right to condemn property.

“A lot of entities have entered into contracts like this one and then they would wake up 10 or 20 or 30 years later and realize that they needed the land,” Early said. “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on these as much as 100 years ago. This is a fundamental proposition of law. . . . The government’s power of eminent domain is an inherent power. You can’t bargain it away or sell it or give it away.”

Egan, who estimates that he already has spent $75,000 defending his land, says he will appeal the decision.

“You tell them straight out: They’ve got a long way to go with me yet.”