Court Overturns Ruling Against Conservancy in Suit by Builder

The California Court of Appeal on Wednesday overturned a ruling that would have forced the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and a water district to pay a developer $4.2 million for interfering with the builder’s ability to buy land near Westlake Village.

Wednesday’s decision sends back to Superior Court the issue of whether the conservancy and the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District improperly thwarted Village Properties’ attempts to buy nearly 500 acres above the Las Virgenes Reservoir.

“It’s a great victory,” said Liz Cheadle, the conservancy’s chairwoman and dean of students at UCLA Law School.

The Court of Appeal held that the lower court improperly granted summary judgment in favor of the builder, which then paved the way for the multimillion-dollar award.

Although the case could again be tried in Superior Court, Wednesday’s opinion appeared to bolster the position of the water district and the conservancy.

“Public entities (such as the district) have an indefeasible right to acquire land for public purposes, a right that is exercised by invoking the power of eminent domain and which cannot be contracted away,” the appeals court held.

The appeals court overturned a decision handed down in 1995 by Superior Court Judge Madeleine I. Flier, who had ruled in favor of Village Properties, an affiliate of the Baldwin Co. of Orange County. Flier had agreed that the conservancy, along with the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, had conspired to interfere with a deal the builder had to buy the land.