Homeowners Frustrated in Attempt to Recoup Losses

As residents of an Agoura Hills neighborhood devastated by landslides slowly recover from watching their homes and dreams crumble downhill, they now face the uphill challenge of recovering their losses.

Their options are limited, potentially expensive and fraught with pitfalls.

With two houses already uninhabitable and a handful of others on uncertain ground, the residents along Via Amistosa are weighing whether to seek compensation for the damage from the city, Los Angeles County, the developer or a host of engineers who signed off on the project.

Getting reimbursed is a difficult proposition in any case.

The situation along Via Amistosa is complicated by the fact that approval to build the tract of five dozen houses south of the Ventura Freeway came from Los Angeles County officials in the late 1970s, but the area is now part of the city of Agoura Hills, formed in 1982.

Each jurisdiction contends that responsibility lies with the other.

In addition, the developer who built the tract has gone bankrupt, and the savings and loan that took over the project has failed. Frustrated homeowners are left wondering whom to blame--who still has any money, that is.

“We don’t have many options,” said Elizabeth O’Linn, whose house was condemned after the hillside behind collapsed, crumbling retaining walls, buckling sidewalks and cracking interior plaster. “We have at least five years of litigation ahead of us.”

Rain-soaked hillsides in the neighborhood of $300,000 and $400,000 homes began sliding Feb. 14.

Conventional wisdom holds that homeowners whose houses are damaged or destroyed by landslides have no way to recoup their losses. Virtually no insurance policies cover such disasters, and public agencies are generally immune to legal attacks. And builders cannot be held liable more than 10 years after construction.

Richard Norton, an attorney who specializes in landslide cases, said residents along Via Amistosa may end up turning against each other to cover their losses. He explained that homeowners down slope may be successful in seeking compensation from the insurance companies of up-slope neighbors whose houses slid down the hill onto the lower property.

“That’s a less desirable alternative than all of the homeowners being able to recover from public agencies,” Norton said.

But because of the shift in jurisdiction from the county to the city of Agoura Hills, that may be even more difficult than usual. Agoura Hills incorporated 11 years ago to free itself from what residents perceived as lax county building standards.

“When a city incorporates, that’s one of the conditions--they accept responsibility for the infrastructure,” said county public works spokeswoman Jean Granucci. “They took on that responsibility when they incorporated.”

To city officials, the slide along Via Amistosa is another legacy of the county’s rule. Current city codes would not have allowed the project because the slopes are too steep, city geologist Jim Slosson said.

Slosson said some of the slope reinforcement plans were changed by builders after they were approved by Los Angeles County, contributing to the sliding problems.

“That’s a no-no,” Slosson said, adding that properly engineered and graded slopes will not fail. But installation of improperly designed systems is “no better than playing Russian roulette,” he said.

Gorian & Associates, the Westlake Village firm that did some of the project’s soil engineering, declined to comment on Slosson’s allegations.