Courtroom Cliffhanger : Dana Point Won’t Assume Liability for Slope, So County Decides to Call City’s Bluff

David Perrin used to joke about the prospect of disaster befalling his Quiet Cannon restaurant, perched atop the steep bluffs on the headlands overlooking Dana Point Harbor.

His newspaper ads in the 1980s beckoned patrons to “slide in” to his bar and grill. The wry humor played on the fact that the Quiet Cannon, now a 23-year-old establishment called Cannons, really was sliding down the rocky, 160-foot slope.

A prolonged legal battle with the county resulted in a county-financed $2-million repair job to stabilize the hillside. But on Friday, the bluffs below Cannon and the costly liability they represent were back in court.

After years of fruitless negotiations between the county and the city of Dana Point, the county finally sued the city, demanding that it take over the maintenance and liability of the harbor bluffs, a move the city has long resisted.

Now a judge will have to rule on the matter, said Byron J. Beam, a Santa Ana attorney who was the county’s lawyer on the issue in the 1980s.

“It’s too bad we’ve got two public bodies fighting over this,” said Beam. “You’d think they could come to some kind of agreement informally.”

The city’s resolute stand on the bluffs was forged in 1989 by William O. Talley, Dana Point’s first city manager, who is now retired. It was Talley’s view that because the harbor was county territory, the county could keep the bluffs too.

“The county put anchors into the hillside and a cement wall and said ‘OK, we have done this, now the city can take over,’ ” Talley said. “Bill Talley said ‘No way. We are not taking responsibility for a fix you made. You got it.’ ”

The story began in the pre-harbor days of 1956 when the county decided to turn an old dirt road--used by fishermen and surfers headed for the old “Killer Dana” surfing spot at the bottom of the hill--into a wider, more accessible roadway now called Cove Road. To do so, workers had to cut into the bluffs to widen the steep, winding road.

Thirty years later in court, Perrin’s attorney successfully demonstrated that the stability of the hillside was sacrificed in the process, Beam said.

“The restaurant owner argued that the county cut back the slopes and made them steeper,” the lawyer said. Perrin, he said, argued that “had they not done this, the bluff would not have failed.”

In 1986, six years after the lawsuit was filed, Perrin and the county reached a settlement. The county spent nearly three years repairing the hillside by sinking 16 anchors as far as 90 feet into the hillside--into bedrock--and building a cement crib wall at the bluff base.

Part of the repair work included the installation of an extensive monitoring system that tracks any shifts in the hillside. Surveys are performed four times a year.

But who should pay for the monitoring and who must assume responsibility for the bluffs remain at issue.

“The liability is what everybody is worried about,” Beam said. “It’s a very good fix and (Dana Point) has nothing to worry about in my opinion.”

The county’s argument is based on the fact that when Dana Point incorporated in 1989, the city took responsibility for most of the roads, slopes and hillsides within its borders, said Ken Bruner, an aide to Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district covers the harbor and bluffs.

“We are a little perplexed as to why they won’t take title to this property,” Bruner said. “When the city accepted all the lands as part of cityhood . . . the incorporation didn’t say everything but this property.”

So far, the city--which continues to reel from the February, 1993, bluff failure that still covers Pacific Coast Highway at its southern border--is standing by Talley’s decision to resist taking over anything related to the harbor. Though the harbor is within city limits, the county owns the harbor and collects all the lease payments from the boats and the shops.

“Our question is, why is the city of Dana Point responsible for something the entire county bought? Why should the liability be on just the city of Dana Point when the harbor is owned by the entire county and built by the county?” said Stephen B. Julian, Dana Point’s current city manager. “Is the city of Fountain Valley responsible for the county’s Mile Square Park?”

Lawrence Watson, the deputy county counsel who filed Friday’s lawsuit against the city, said the answer to the issue lies in the resolutions adopted when the city was incorporated, something a judge will have to interpret.

The hillside has “been stable for nine years and survived a couple of earthquakes and an extremely rainy season,” he said, yet the city won’t take over the bluffs. He said the county had been reluctant to sue the city.

“We are frustrated,” Watson said, “and we don’t see any recourse left.”