City to Ask to Pay Slide Damages Bit by Bit : Lawsuit: Owners of Palos Verdes Estates house object to any installment payment plan and are asking the court for $940,000 interest in the 10-year-old case.

It has been a decade since a large chunk of the cliffs above Bluff Cove broke away and fell into the sea, damaging or destroying a dozen high-priced homes in Palos Verdes Estates.

Since then, the city has settled 11 of the 12 resulting lawsuits, paying out $14 million in damages after the courts ruled that city-owned storm drains had eroded the cliffs, triggering the landslide.

The final suit, however, is proving tougher to resolve. The city acknowledges that it caused the slide and is willing to pay damages but it is balking at paying nearly $1 million in interest on the money due the plaintiffs.

This last and most controversial case involves an expensive bluff-top home owned by Clyde and Nona Emery. In 1988 a jury awarded the Emerys $1.1 million in damages and costs. The Emerys want $940,000 in interest because the case has dragged on so long.

The case, filed not long after the slide, came to trial in 1988. The city appealed all the way to the state Supreme Court and lost. On Tuesday night, the City Council voted 5 to 0 to ask the Superior Court to allow it to pay the damages--not including interest--in installments over five years.

“That’s a lot of money to pay out,” said city Finance Director Bill Yeomans, asserting that a lump sum payment would strain the city’s already precarious finances. “We simply don’t carry that kind of cash around.”

The Emerys’ attorney, Richard Franck, said they will insist on immediate payment of the full damage award, plus interest.

“We will object to any installment payment plan,” Franck said. The Emerys are also asking the court for $940,000 in interest because the city delayed settling the case for nearly a decade, he said.

The city’s request for installment payments and the argument over interest are scheduled for a March 8 hearing in Torrance Superior Court.

The suit, along with the 11 others like it, stems from the collapse on Easter Sunday, 1983, of a 40- to 50-foot-thick chunk of the cliff above Bluff Cove. The slide carried away back yards, swimming pools and patios, dropping them hundreds of feet into the ocean below. No one was killed or injured.

“It sounded like a sonic boom,” said Nona Emery. When she rushed behind her house she found most of the back yard was gone, but the house at 1509 Palos Verdes Drive West was undamaged.

There were a dozen of these $2-million, five-bedroom homes on the bluffs above the cove. Each had spectacular views of Santa Monica Bay, city officials acknowledged.

Three of the houses were so badly damaged that they had to be demolished. The threat of further slides along the cliffs made the other houses unsalable, the owners contended in their lawsuits. The owners blamed city storm drains, saying storm water from streets had eroded the cliffs.

Two juries agreed, and the city settled 11 of the dozen cases. The city also passed a 10% utility tax to pay for a complete overhaul of the storm drain system, officials said.

Two-thirds of the $14 million in damages paid out so far by the city has been covered by insurance. The litigation has cost city taxpayers another $1 million, city officials said. In return, the city got title to 10 of the bluff-top properties.

Four of the homes are rented to the city manager, the police chief and several policemen who share two of the homes. The rents are kept low, officials said, because the officers and the city manager are on call for emergencies.

The Emerys continue to live in their home. The city argues that because of this continued occupancy, the couple is not entitled to collect interest on the damage award. The question of how much value should be placed on the couple’s use of their home is slated to be resolved in Superior Court as part of the litigation over interest payments.