Court Convenes at Disaster Site : Quake: Judge leads tour through Northridge Meadows complex where 16 died. It is the key piece of evidence in the first wrongful death lawsuit stemming from the temblor.

The roof line resembles a roller coaster, with all its dips and curves. Every window is blown out, and the slats of the vertical blinds beckon like skeletal fingers in the breeze. Flies swarm in air heavy with the cloying stench of decay.

Court is now in session, the Honorable William A. MacLaughlin presiding. Enter at your own risk. Hard hats required.

Trailed by three dozen attorneys, engineers, city officials and news crews, MacLaughlin walked through the ruins of the Northridge Meadows apartments on Wednesday, inspecting the listing hulk that is the key piece of evidence in Cerone vs. S.J. Properties 4, the first wrongful death lawsuit to arise from the Jan. 17 quake.

He arrived at 10:30 a.m. When he left about 90 minutes later, the judge was somber after viewing so much destruction.

“When you see what is left of all these peoples’ lives in every apartment, it gives you great pause. I think it would give anyone pause,” he said.

The building on Reseda Boulevard appears to have been twisted every which way before coming to rest atop cars, sofas, beds and trees--even in the middle of what once was a driveway. The walk-though allowed the judge and attorneys to decide which sections should be dismantled layer by layer in a costly controlled demolition, and which should be razed quickly.

Some of the stucco walls have peeled away like paper. Those that still stand--sickeningly skewed in places--are marked with the grim graffiti of death: The black letters “DB”--for dead body--had been painted on the walls by rescuers who searched for survivors the morning of the temblor. Northridge Meadows has become a macabre tourist attraction. Now, it also serves as an engineering test laboratory as experts study its construction, hoping to improve building codes.

But to the city of Los Angeles, the complex is a vermin-infested public nuisance that must be torn down--the sooner the better.

For now, the evidence-gathering continues under a court order preserving the building. The buried first floor must be studied before experts can say how and why Northridge Meadows collapsed.

“This won’t be the first time an autopsy has been done in order to determine the cause of death,” attorney Ned Good said.

The judge, who ultimately must decide whether this disaster was an act of God or man, or some combination of the two, was but the latest of thousands of people who have been drawn to the collapsed building.

The “looky-loos,” as the locals call them, “come day and night,” said Sgt. Ed Wheelis of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire station. “On weekends, there’s a big crowd out there.”

The tourists, many from other countries, snap photos, crowd sidewalks and ring up profits for nearby restaurants. When last Sunday’s 5.3 aftershock hit, for example, it sent about 30 people running from King’s Mongolian Bar-B-Q at the strip shopping center next door.

“I’ve seen people pose their kids in front of the place like they’re at Disneyland. It’s morbid,” said Allen Tharpe, a lawyer for owner Shashikant Jogani.

Police report there have been numerous fender-benders as the curious, riveted by the sight, ram into the cars of other rubber-neckers.

Wednesday’s traffic was typical. Brakes and tires squealed intermittently.

A woman who gave her name as Deborah Deadman, of Canoga Park, said she’d brought visitors to see the damage. “The hair stands up on the back of your neck, just knowing what those people went through,” she said.

“Why did this building get it so hard when other ones nearby didn’t?” asked her friend, Sharon Williams of Redding.

That question cuts to the heart of the lawsuit, and the investigations by teams of engineers.

MacLaughlin, a San Fernando Superior Court judge, has been assigned the Northridge Meadows litigation.

Other lawsuits are expected to be filed. The families of 10 of the 16 people who died have retained lawyers.

The lawyers allege that owners, builders and architects of the 1972 building were negligent. Attorneys for owner Jogani and builder Brian Heller say Northridge Meadows was built to code and that the collapse was caused by an “act of God”--the 6.8-magnitude quake.

On Wednesday, Northridge Meadows served a dual purpose--as Exhibit A in the coming legal battles and as the courtroom for, literally, an open-air hearing about how demolition should proceed.

On his tour, MacLaughlin and the others learned where people died, where the more dramatic rescues occurred and where the building pancaked onto first-floor apartments and tuck-in parking garages.

Each apartment they passed seemed to be a gaping cave of wreckage. Dried Christmas trees, lights and ornaments still decorated some balconies.

After walking through the courtyard, two of the lawyers and the judge ventured inside the northwest corner of the building, which pulled away from the rest of the building and leaned precariously against a concrete retaining wall.

“If you feel the ground start to move, please run,” advised Robert M. Freedman, one of owner Jogani’s lawyers.

On Jan. 17, the building had lurched 12 feet west and eight feet down. A section of a rear parking structure also collapsed, leaving one car atop another in a twisted “T,” right next to a “No Parking” sign.

“How would you like to be here at 4:30 in the morning with no lights, no shoes and people all over screaming, ‘Pull me out! Pull me out!’ ” said Joel E. Castro, the Santa Monica lawyer who represents the families of Bea Reskin and Ann Cerone, who died in their beds, trapped under the top two floors.