Play Fort Under Attack : Neighbors’ Suit Claims 12-Foot-High Structure Blocks Their View

Nobody’s disputing that John L’Engle’s home is his castle. It’s the fort out back that some neighbors don’t like. The 12-foot-high wooden play fort is under siege in Ventura County Superior Court, where a lawsuit was filed Thursday seeking to force its removal from L’Engle’s back yard in Newbury Park.

In the suit, neighbors Ralph and Sandra Martin maintain that the plywood structure is a nuisance that has lowered their property value and violated their privacy.

L’Engle said the fort is “just a place for a kid to have fun.”

“You mean I have to get an attorney over this?” he asked after learning he was accused of a fort tort in court. The suit seeks damages in excess of $25,000.

The Martins could not be reached for comment. Their attorney, Linda Norem Burnham, said she could not discuss the case without their permission.

L’Engle, an electrical contractor, said the project began last summer after his wife, Deborah, asked him to do something with all the scrap lumber he had stacked alongside the house.

Like most back-yard forts, it was a custom job. The couple’s two daughters, Melissa, 10, and Rebecca, 13, insisted on a two-story design. And like most home improvements, it wasn’t as easy as L’Engle had expected.

As soon as the fort was completed, the Martins complained that it violated setback requirements, L’Engle said. The Martins, who have a wall separating their back yard from the L’Engles’, also didn’t like the girls looking into their yard, L’Engle said.

“It was not in compliance,” L’Engle said. But on the plus side, he said, “there was a pine tree that blocked their view” of the structure.

To meet setback rules, however, L’Engle had to move the fort across the yard to a spot where it was legal--but where it blocks the Martins’ vista of the surrounding mountains, he said.

“When he said to get legal, we had to put it in his view,” L’Engle said. He said he checked city building and setback requirements and city inspectors--summoned by the Martins--verified that the structure was legal. City officials could not be reached for comment.

Although they had not met the Martins before the dispute arose, the L’Engles said they tried to accommodate their neighbors. But Ralph Martin was “just totally unreasonable,” Deborah L’Engle said. “He said in very crude language that that wouldn’t do, that he still would be able to see it,” she said.

“We offered to do some things that would mitigate their concerns,” John L’Engle said. “We were going to paint it and board up the side that faces their house so the kids couldn’t look into their yard. That would not satisfy them.”

The girls love the fort, their parents say. Its two floors are connected by a rope ladder, and for quick getaways they can ride a pulley down a cable from the second floor to the ground.

“It’s our back yard,” John L’Engle said. “Our yard is for them. That’s why we live in Newbury Park and not some apartment somewhere.”

No hearing has been set on the suit, which was assigned to Superior Court Division 30, a vacant court bench awaiting the appointment of a new judge by Gov. Pete Wilson.

John L’Engle said the problem should take care of itself before too long. “I expect it to have a life of 18 months or two years,” he said. By then, he said, Melissa will be 11 or 12 and Rebecca “will be wanting to drive a car.”