Soka Loses One Round With Conservancy : Courts: School wanted to include more plaintiffs in the lawsuit that is attempting to condemn part of its property.

The protracted legal battle between the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Soka University over its scenic Calabasas campus continued Wednesday with the school losing a bid to draw even more players into the already complicated case.

The school wanted a judge to add the conservancy--as well as the Ventura County Board of Supervisors and two Ventura County parks agencies--as parties to a lawsuit filed by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which is attempting to condemn part of Soka’s property.

It’s not unusual for litigants to try to add defendants to civil suits. In this case, Soka wanted the judge to add the conservancy and Ventura agencies as plaintiffs, arguing they are partly behind the condemnation process launched by the MRCA.

It was a move that even Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Barnet Cooperman characterized as “an issue of some subtlety,” but one that nonetheless would have seriously hampered the MRCA’s efforts to seize Soka’s campus for parkland by driving up court costs and turning even routine hearings into scheduling nightmares.

The MRCA wants part of Soka’s campus for a park visitors center; Soka wants to expand its small language school into a liberal arts college.

Soka’s request to Cooperman addressed the way in which the MRCA operates and how the condemnation process was launched in 1992. The MRCA is operated under an agreement between the conservancy and two Ventura County parks agencies, and is overseen by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

Soka lawyer Hodge Dolle said his intent was to draw out of their “mystical cloaks” the governmental and park agencies he claims have been hiding behind the “alter-ego” of the MRCA, which is an arm of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Dolle hinted that officials from the conservancy, which is a state agency that acquires parkland, intentionally used the conservation authority to condemn Soka so they could circumvent state law and shield the conservancy from any negative fallout from the case.

“This is like Dr. Frankenstein saying I’m not liable for the big guy’s trouble,” he said.

But Robert McMurry, attorney for the conservation authority, said the failed move was little more than an attempt to bleed the agency financially by dragging legal proceedings on indefinitely.

McMurry conceded that the conservancy has tremendous interest in whether Soka’s property is condemned, and will file friend-of-the-court briefs in the case. But, he added, the conservancy is legally distinct from the conservation authority and should be treated so.

In the end, Cooperman refused Soka’s request, saying the school would gain no legal advantage by including the agencies in the proceedings.

Already, the case has spent 20 months in various courtrooms around California--and the formal condemnation trial has not even begun.