Man Ordered to Pay $2.75 Million for Painted Cave Fire

A historic ruling in one of California’s most destructive man-made disasters will not yet close the book on Santa Barbara’s Painted Cave fire.

In an action celebrated by Santa Barbara County, Judge Denise de Bellefeuille last week ordered Leonard Ross to pay $2.75 million in damages for starting the fire on June 27, 1990. In two hours, the blaze roared out of the mountains and burned to the sea, along the way destroying 427 homes and 11 public buildings and killing a 37-year-old woman trapped by flames.

In a lawsuit, a jury found that Ross started the fire to burn out a neighbor in the back country above Santa Barbara.

Ross’ attorney, Barbara Carroll, said she would ask for a new trial. She said the jury was allowed to hear improper evidence, such as testimony from a former girlfriend that Ross had started another fire in 1978 at his Santa Barbara motorcycle parts shop.

Ross used the insurance settlement from that fire to pay for his 40-acre property at the end of a tortuous, 2.5-mile dirt road near San Marcos Pass. Ross’ long-running feud with a neighbor there finally led to the Painted Cave fire, the jury decided.

Carroll said Ross will never be able to pay the damages. His main source of income is from decorative solar-powered butterflies that he makes in a workshop on his property and sells at craft fairs. And his land is so remote, Carroll said, that it isn’t that valuable.

Carroll said that when she told her client about the ruling, he said “OK.” His subdued reaction was in part because he knew the judgment was coming. “And he knows [the case] isn’t over,” she said.

Jake Stoddard, the county’s attorney, was pleased but not surprised by the judge’s ruling. “Damages were never really a disputed issue,” he said. “The issue was Ross’ belief that we couldn’t prove he did it.”

The judge awarded the county virtually everything Stoddard wanted. The damages included $1.1 million in lost buildings, including the county jail honor farm and laundry building, and $426,000 in vehicles destroyed when the blaze raced through the sheriff’s complex.

She also included $312,000 in damaged personal property and $231,000 for the cost of investigating the fire. Although the fire caused $250 million in damage altogether, the county was allowed to collect only on its own losses.

Back in 1990, investigators quickly determined that the Painted Cave fire was arson. They found a match where it started. But for five years, the case went unsolved.

It was reopened after another former girlfriend told her minister that Ross had confessed to starting the fire. He was just trying to burn out his neighbor, said Peggy Finley, but it “got out of hand.”

Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon refused to file criminal charges against Ross, saying the case was too weak. But when Ross sued the county for investigating him, the county saw an opportunity and filed a countersuit accusing him of starting the fire. The jury ruled in the county’s favor this summer on a 9-3 vote.

Ross said he did not think it was fair for the county to come after him with civil charges for a case in which it had decided not to file criminal charges.

County officials were delighted at the outcome, saying that Ross was hoist on his own petard. “If he hadn’t sued, none of this would have happened,” Stoddard said recently.

Though Ross maintains his innocence, Sheriff Jim Thomas has no doubt that he is the culprit. “He should be in prison,” Thomas has said of Ross. “And he won’t be unless something else comes up.”

Stoddard said the first step in attempting to collect damages is to identify all of Ross’ assets. If it turns out that the land is all he has, the county will try to seize it.