La Vina Project Trial Stopped Before It Starts : Courts: The judge admonishes both sides for improper documents. The development dispute is rescheduled for Jan. 12.

The first day of a long-delayed trial over the county’s handling of the La Vina Housing Development came to a sudden halt last week when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen E. O’Neil removed the case from his calender.

Citing the failure of both the county and Friends of La Vina to properly prepare court documents, O’Neil ordered that the documents be rewritten to conform to court requirements.

Attorneys’ aides said that O’Neil admonished the lawyers for the county and Friends of La Vina for attempting to circumvent his 50-page limit on their legal briefs by changing type size and single-spacing footnotes.

O’Neil declined to elaborate, saying he could not comment on a case in progress.

Southwest Diversified, one of the project’s developers and a party to the lawsuit, applauded O’Neil’s decision and quickly asked the court to dismiss the suit, saying that a November deadline for deciding the case had passed. However, the motion for dismissal was denied on Tuesday and the trial has tentatively been rescheduled for Jan. 12.

“The decision came as quite a shock to us,” said Abraham R. Brown, an attorney for Friends of La Vina, “We filed our documents with the court a month ago and this is the first time we were told there was a problem.”

Friends of La Vina, a group of Altadena residents opposed to the 272-home project, sued the county in 1990 for failing to properly review the development’s environmental impact statement and for failing to follow its own general plan.

The trial was delayed by appeals over a part of the lawsuit which claimed that the county’s practice of allowing developers to prepare their own environmental impact reports was improper and hampered independent analysis.

Superior Court Judge John Zebrowski initially ruled against this practice, but his decision was overturned by the state Court of Appeal in October, 1991.

At that point, the parties to the lawsuit agreed during a court conference to bring the matter to trial within a year or let it be dismissed.

The La Vina Housing Development, which was unveiled in 1988, won approval from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors three weeks ago and, pending the outcome of the trial, the board’s decision will allow developers to break ground early next year.