Judge Slashes Home Builder’s Jury Award

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has cut by nearly two-thirds the amount that a state parkland agency and a local water district must pay to a home-building company for depriving it of a chance to buy a large tract of land near Westlake Village.

Judge Madeleine I. Flier ordered a jury’s $11.2-million award to Village Properties reduced to $4.2 million. The order represented a partial victory for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which had been ordered to pay the award.

The judge decided that the higher sum amounted to double-dipping because the Westlake Village-based home builder had previously received a $7-million settlement from the original owner of the land, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Officials at the conservancy and water district were delighted by the news and expressed confidence that the rest of the award would be voided on appeal. “We are really happy,” said Laurie Collins, staff counsel at the conservancy, which has said that it is enduring a financial crunch.

Brian Lysaght, attorney for Village Properties, declared the judge’s decision “dead wrong” and said the firm would also appeal.

The home builder won a summary judgment last year in which Flier found that the two government agencies had conspired to thwart the company’s attempt to buy 492 hillside acres above the scenic Las Virgenes Reservoir in 1992. The water district subsequently bought the property from the FDIC for $6.3 million as a buffer around its reservoir and sold half the land to the conservancy to turn into parkland.

After long deliberations over the amount of the penalty in February, a jury ordered the conservancy and the water district to pay Village Properties $8.7 million in lost profits and $2.5 million in expenses. The home builder had sought up to $60 million in lost profits.

In the two-page decision released Monday, Flier ruled that the FDIC, the water district and the conservancy were all “equally and actively responsible” for Village Properties’ loss of profits. Therefore, she asserted the water district and conservancy were entitled to a “set-off” of the amount the federal government had already paid to prevent “double recovery for the same loss.”