County Loses $4.6-Million Suit Over Malibu Landslide

For 26 years, Scottish-born carpenter Jack Martin spent every spare moment working on his Malibu hillside cottage until it was a comfortable place for his wife and daughter.

But he had only one weekend to pack up and move out two years ago after a winter storm triggered a landslide that cracked open Martin’s hand-built home.

On Wednesday a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded Jack and Lynne Martin $2.7 million in damages after deciding the county caused the landslide by improperly diverting rain runoff around the hill.

A savings and loan that owned a second home on McCray Lane in the Las Flores Canyon area that was destroyed in the 1998 landslide was awarded $1.9 million.

Jurors decided that the county violated its own policies by allowing diversion of millions of gallons of runoff from three housing developments farther up the canyon into a small natural stream that flowed beneath the McCray Lane hillside.

Experts testified during the 2 1/2-month trial that the runoff washed away the toe of the slope, causing the landslide. County officials denied responsibility.

Downey Savings and Loan, which owned the house next door to the Martins, sued the county after the slide. The S&L;’s Orange County lawyers, Thomas Salinger and Steve Goon, volunteered to represent the Martins as well.

“Theirs was a real tragic case,” Salinger said Thursday of the couple. “They had put their heart and soul into their house.”

Martin, 65, said they put every dime they had into it, too.

“It reminded us of the Scottish Highlands,” he said Thursday. “We weren’t on the beach or in the high-rent area of Malibu. But there was open space and a postage-stamp view of the ocean through the hills, just like in Scotland.”

After buying the 1,200-square-foot cottage in 1972, Martin virtually rebuilt it, eventually adding 1,400 square feet. “It was the first house we ever owned. We planned to live there forever,” he said.

After being forced out, the Martins moved to a tiny home in Culver City where they remain.

Along McCray Lane, meanwhile, the damaged homes and two others remain abandoned and red-tagged as uninhabitable, perched precariously on the hillside.

“We go back up there now and again. It breaks our hearts to see it sitting there all twisted and bent,” Martin said.

Although there have been discussions with the county about tearing down the damaged structures and turning the hillside into a park, no decisions have been made, Salinger said.

Lawyers for the county were unavailable for comment Thursday about any plans for the empty houses or possible appeal of Wednesday’s verdict.

Martin, meanwhile, said he wonders if he would ever see any of the cash: “I can knock nails, but I’m not much with legal matters. But I know I may be dead before we get any money.”