Trouble in Paradise: Dream Homes Slip Away : Pacific Palisades: For some, the lush life has turned to mud, as houses wrecked in slides inspire grief and lawsuits.

The sweep of surf a few hundred feet below Porto Marina Way is jaw-dropping. The sunsets too. It’s a hillside you’d love to live on--but it is crawling toward the sea.

The sliding mass got a push this winter from a series of punishing rains, bending houses as if they were toys, and leaving some residents of the well-to-do Pacific Palisades neighborhood perched on an uncertain future. So far, the earth has crept about four feet downhill, causing six homes to be deemed unsafe for occupancy. A cliff-top lot above Pacific Coast Highway vanished in a washout.

And, inevitable as the force of gravity, there is already talk of lawsuits.

“We’re going to sue everybody,” attorney Richard N. Weissfeld said. Clients Micaela and Gary Brazina are considering several suits, charging that the previous owner and others misled them into thinking the million-dollar dream house they bought last year was safe. The owners of the badly cracked two-story house were hit Tuesday with a city notice warning that continued occupation would be at their own risk. It will cost $250,000 just to fix the foundation.

“It used to be the place we came to at the end of the day for solace. Now it’s a war zone,” said Micaela Brazina, a songwriter and actor. She said the couple will abandon their home, as several neighbors have already, and fight out in court whether the purchase is valid.

The Brazinas are now officially initiated into the network of residents who for years have dealt with slides in one way or another. Neighbors swap geological reports as if they were recipes. At least five have sued the city over past slide damage that they blamed on broken water mains and poor maintenance. Living here is roulette with a view, the risks made higher because insurance companies do not offer landslide protection.

The surest reminder of the restless hillside is the long-broken house on Castellammare Drive that Vince Caruso says he plans to rebuild--once and for all--using huge pilings to secure it.

“The end of time will come, and that damn house will still be there,” he promised.

Caruso’s house, now just a shell, was damaged beyond habitability by slides in 1983 and 1989. The neighborhood, which dates to the 1920s, straddles half a dozen slides--30-foot layers of clay-like earth that are always inching downhill but get extra slippery when it’s wet. Even without the rain, there seems to be a lot of water underneath, but no one is sure why. Speculation ranges from chronically faulty mains and leaking swimming pools to gathering lakes of rainwater from uphill.

Longtime residents remember the last big slide, in 1969. It prompted Los Angeles to bury pilings to bolster streets and spelled the doom of three homes plus a cliff-side house that threatened to tumble down onto Pacific Coast Highway. Neighbors were kept awake at night as crews struggled to cut that house free of its anchoring posts and take it down.

“I do feel uneasy about the whole thing,” said 24-year resident Patti Flynn, an artist whose Porto Marina Way home so far is unscathed. “I just feel thankful--my house and the ground are behaving beautifully.”

Whether the ground will keep behaving may depend on how soon the city gets to its $2.7-million emergency reconstruction of the two weakened streets, Porto Marina Way and Castellammare Drive, portions of which have been sandbagged and covered with plastic. Plans include sinking rows of 80-foot pilings bound together by underground concrete beams.

Water and sewer pipes already have been moved above ground to prevent breakage, and gas company workers were disconnecting the line to the Brazina house.

“We walked into the house, and our hearts exploded. It was the house for us. It just said, ‘Buy me,’ ” Micaela Brazina said. “Now it’s saying, ‘Get out.’ ”

The couple say that neither the previous owner, David Haddad, nor the real-estate agent disclosed earlier slide damage to the 1928 house. A geologist they hired before purchase did a spotty study and did not indicate the level of threat to the house, Weissfeld said. The couple are trying to undo the deal and get their down payment back.

“There’s no way we would have bought this house,” said Brazina, adding that it is now impossible to sell. “Who’s going to buy a house with every house around it condemned and falling in?”

Haddad disputed the Brazinas’ account. “I disclosed. They did a geological report. They had full knowledge,” he said. Haddad, who bought the house in 1987, said he has no idea if the house suffered slide damage in the past. He declined to discuss the matter further.

The Brazinas may not be the only homeowners filing suits. Weissfeld also represents several neighbors who say they plan to file a claim against the city, contending that damage to their homes was aggravated by poor drainage, leaking water pipes and inattention.

Some of the homes are lost causes. They will have to be torn down and the lots bolstered to prevent more slippage. For those that can be saved, the costs of engineering and other studies required by city inspectors can run easily into the tens of thousands of dollars. The actual work, of course, will cost even more.

Carole and Bill Haber are throwing in the towel on their hopelessly damaged home on Castellammare Drive. Hairline cracks that first appeared during January’s rains have grown into wounds you can stick a fist through. The couple are already engaged in a lawsuit with the city over damage caused years ago. Now they have to tear down their home of 17 years, with no prospect of selling it anytime soon.

For now, they are staying at a friend’s Malibu beach house and are buying a new place--on flat ground. “I’ve had it with hillside living,” Carole Haber said.

Others are digging in. George and Selma Lerner haven’t left their house on Porto Marina Way, in spite of the encroaching earth wall behind them that is pushing over a retaining barrier and threatening the house. City officials delivered a notice that the property must be made safe before it can be lived in, but George Lerner said the couple refuse to surrender to fear.

Gazing out at the sinking sun and a glowing band of clouds above the ocean, Lerner was certain: “They can’t get me out of here,” he said.

“A scene like this you only see in heaven.”