Torrance Settles Suit Over Slide Site

In possibly the largest negotiated settlement in city history, Torrance City Council members early Wednesday agreed to pay $2.26 million for a small patch of bluff-top land covered with bougainvillea vines.

The agreement ends a four-year lawsuit in which homeowner Fred J. Smith charged that city officials improperly condemned his Hollywood Riviera house to stabilize a landslide on city property.

The settlement left neither side in the dispute happy.

City officials wondered how they will pay for it. Smith, still trying to adjust to the loss of a showplace home he and his late wife loved, would rather none of it ever happened.

The settlement of Smith’s lawsuit raises the city’s total cost for the Via Corona/Vista Largo landslide to well over the $7 million mark.

The 300-by-200-foot slide area first began to cause trouble on April 5, 1986, when it slipped down against former Mayor Albert Isen’s house. City officials eventually paid Isen $465,000 for the loss of his house, which had to be demolished.

The first slide, which continued for five days, eventually exposed the foundation of Smith’s home. City engineers said the house would have to go. Smith’s engineers said there were two possible ways to shore up the hillside without demolishing the house.

On Oct. 21, 1986, the City Council voted unanimously to condemn the house, offering Smith $450,000 for it. Smith, protesting that the house was worth nearly twice that, tried to block the demolition.

He filed an $11.5-million claim against the city after the house, which sat on a 14,000-square-foot lot, was torn down in November, 1986.

Torrence officials said they believe Wednesday’s settlement to be the largest in the city’s history, though they were unable to confirm that. Regardless, they were distressed by its size.

“We set aside $1.3 million for this . . . so the rest is going to have to come from reserves,” said Mayor Katy Geissert, who noted that the city carries no insurance to cover such losses. “It’s the sort of thing where you have to heave a great sigh and do what you believe is best for the city. . . . We felt that under the circumstances, and considering what it would cost us to carry this further in the courts, it was prudent to settle.”

Assistant Finance Director Ken Flewellyn said the additional $1 million probably will have to be taken from $9.5 million set aside as the estimated costs for other pending lawsuits.

“Obviously, we’re going to have to somehow establish more reserves (to compensate) for this,” he said.

Smith, who has built a near-duplicate of the old house on a smaller lot just above the site where he once lived, said the amount of the settlement is deceptive.

“It may sound big, but this is exactly what I’ve paid out, what this suit has cost me,” he said. “The first thing I’m going to do is pay off all these debts I’ve incurred. . . . I just wanted to get this thing over with, get my money back, pay off my bills and put this all behind me.”

Given a choice, he said, Smith gladly would trade the money to have his old home back.

From the spacious balcony of his new home, Smith gazes down on the land where he and his late wife, Ruth, lived for 26 years. All that remains is a blue-roofed Japanese pagoda, once situated next to a 16-foot waterfall and koi pond in a meticulously landscaped back yard, and a bare patch of land where the house once stood. City workers last month planted row upon row of bougainvillea vines there.

The old site, one of the largest residential lots in the neighborhood, sits at the edge of a small point of land and commands a sweeping view south into Long Beach and north to Malibu.

“It was our forever-and-ever home, and we didn’t want to lose it,” Smith said. “My wife was ill. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t go home. And that hurts.”

Views also are spectacular from Smith’s new house, which sits about 150 feet back from the old site on a smaller plot of land, but are not quite as expansive.

Smith, a retired mortician, bought the site of his new house for $235,000, then spent $485,000 trying to duplicate his old home. But he said his efforts fell short.

“I took the old blueprints to an architect and said, ‘Make it as close to the old one as you can,’ ” Smith said. “He did his best, but it is smaller.”

One of the features that had to be given up was the elaborate Japanese garden in the back.

But the new house did match the old one enough to bring some peace to Smith’s ailing wife, who had suffered the first of several strokes shortly before the landslide.

“It took two years from the day we moved out (of the old house), but we finally got her furniture around her and created familiar surroundings,” he said. “On her lucid days, when she was feeling better, she enjoyed her home, and I enjoyed being with her here.”

The couple had been married 46 years when Ruth Smith died Dec. 8, 1988.

Alone now, Smith tries to entertain friends as often as possible and to enjoy the tranquility of his new home.

“I think Torrance is a good city. I’m glad I live here,” he said quietly. “But I’ve lost four years. When you’ve got a suit hanging over you, it’s depressing. It pushes you down. It’s this constant bother and worry.

“I’m just glad it’s over.”