In Quake Lawsuit, Judge Not Moved

A Sacramento judge rejected an effort by state seismic safety engineers to get themselves moved out of a 90-year-old downtown Los Angeles office building that an independent structural engineer found could be unsafe in an earthquake.

Superior Court Judge Lloyd G. Connelly ruled that state authorities and engineers working for the owner of the Washington building at 311 S. Spring St. should have another six months to fashion a plan to make the building safe with a seismic retrofit.

The 45 engineers who work on the top four floors of the 13-story building had asked the court to enforce a settlement they reached two years ago with the state Department of General Services. Under the settlement, the state officials agreed to either retrofit the building or move the engineers if an independent engineer determined that the building was unsafe.

Such a finding was reported last summer by an engineer with the firm of Brandow and Johnston Associates. But since then, the state and building owners have failed to agree on a course of action.

The state has a 20-year lease to use the building, at an annual cost of more than $2 million. Besides the engineers, about 400 other state employees work there on lower floors, but they are not part of the legal dispute.