Mountains Conservancy Hires Lawyers Known for Aiding Landowners : Development: Robert McMurry and Gideon Kanner will fight to condemn 244 acres of Soka campus.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows.

And so, it seems, do condemnation proceedings.

As the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy begins the first use of its power of eminent domain, it has retained two of Southern California’s most renowned property attorneys--men who earned their courtroom spurs fighting just the kind of proceedings they are now pressing.

Robert McMurry, 45, and Gideon Kanner, 62, are the lead attorneys in the conservancy’s legal attempt to take over 244 acres of Soka University’s scenic campus in the hills south of Calabasas.

It is an unusual role for both men.

“It does feel strange,” McMurry said of his first time serving as the lawyer for a public agency seeking to seize private property. Most of his decade-long legal career has been spent defending private property owners against public agencies seeking their land and trying to wring concessions for development interests.

“It’s like looking through the telescope on the wrong end,” he said about working for the state parks agency. “You have to get used to things looking different.”

Different, indeed.

McMurry is best known around Los Angeles City Hall as the lawyer who represented developer Jack Spound in his successful lawsuit against the city over plans to build on the Warner Ridge site in Woodland Hills.

And Kanner, a former professor at Loyola Law School, won several landmark cases in the 1960s and ‘70s that changed eminent domain law in California.

“When I saw in the paper that Bob McMurry was representing the conservancy, I just chuckled,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus, who was among the primary targets in Spound’s suit.

Few people, however, chuckle when they find themselves opposite McMurry in court. Incisive and lucid, McMurry has been admired by conservancy Executive Director Joseph T. Edmiston since the two faced off in a college debate competition.

“He was one of the few people who beat the pants off of me,” Edmiston said. “He has a debater’s demeanor, and that is precisely why we hired him.”

Although the conservancy has two attorneys on its staff and access to dozens of lawyers who work for the state attorney general’s office, Edmiston went outside the state payroll to snap up McMurry and Kanner because of the complexity and importance of the Soka case.

“It’s just like someone getting ready for brain surgery,” Edmiston said. “The family practitioner will cost less, but you don’t trust the family jewels with a non-specialist.”

The conservancy wants to acquire Soka’s land at Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway to build a headquarters for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. But Soka, which refused a $19.7-million conservancy offer for its land last year, plans to build a 3,400-student college on the site.

According to Edmiston, the board of the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, the arm of the conservancy trying to acquire Soka’s land, has approved spending up to $250,000 to cover legal fees. That figure is expected to jump to at least $400,000 or $500,000, Edmiston and others said.

Some have criticized spending that much public money to pay private attorneys. But Edmiston said the lawyers’ expertise could allow the conservancy to ultimately pay millions of dollars less for the Soka land.

Soka cannot be forced off the land unless it is paid a fair price, which will be decided by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury. Without attorneys versed in eminent domain proceedings who can devote sufficient time to the case, the state could end up paying more than the land is worth, Edmiston said.

The school, meanwhile, has made it clear that it will not give up its land without a fight.

“We will spend whatever it takes to protect our property,” Soka spokesman Jeff Ourvan said. He declined to estimate how much the school expects to spend on legal fees, but described the fight as “a battle of tyrannosaurus against triceratops. We’ll see who wins.”

Observers of the battle for Soka’s property have noted that Edmiston’s hiring of the two litigators was a shrewd move for other reasons. By retaining McMurry and Kanner, the parks agency assures they will not be tapped by Soka.

Ourvan said the school never considered hiring either McMurry or Kanner to defend it against the conservancy’s proceedings. Instead, the Japanese-language school retained Hodge Dolle, another well-known property lawyer and a longtime friend of Kanner.

Dolle and Kanner have never been on opposing sides in a case. Even in this trial, the two are friendly. At a hearing last week, for instance, Kanner addressed Dolle as “Hodge, bubee ,” a Yiddish term of affection.

Hodge acknowledged the odd feeling of litigating against his colleagues in the small field of private condemnation lawyers. “It is ironic, at best,” he said.

For their part, McMurry and Kanner said they have little difficulty switching sides. “Condemning land for a park service was something I could support philosophically,” McMurry said.

Kanner added: “I take cases because that’s what I do for a living. I don’t see anything wrong with the existence or the exercise of the power of eminent domain. It has to be used sometimes.”