Caltrans Partly Liable for Malibu Slide : Jury Sides With 12 Elderly Homeowners in Big Rock Mesa Area

A jury in the case of 12 elderly homeowners and their families found Thursday that the state Department of Transportation was partly responsible for the massive 1983 landslide that destroyed and damaged homes at Big Rock Mesa in the Malibu area.

More than a year ago, in the first of about 230 lawsuits growing out of that destructive slide, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jack T. Ryburn set what the homeowners’ attorneys said was a precedent for the other cases by ruling that Los Angeles County was liable. But he dismissed the case against Caltrans and the state.

On Thursday, attorneys Richard D. Norton and Kenneth R. Chiate said on behalf of their clients, a jury set its own precedent for the future trials by finding that Caltrans had contributed to the slide by making highway cuts into the hillside despite a 1959 state study recommending against development in areas like Big Rock Mesa, the scene of an ancient slide.

Caltrans, the jurors agreed after three days of deliberation, should have objected to the county’s approval of development in the area that included seepage pits and horizontal drains rather than sewers.

In the initial case, heard late last year, Ryburn found that the county should pay more than $2 million to Margaret and August Hansch, whose luxury home was ground to rubble in the slide.

That case is on appeal and not expected to be finally settled for several months.

In the case of the dozen families whose verdict came in Thursday, the jury found in favor of nine on their claim for inverse condemnation--under which the state must pay for damage to private property caused by a state project.

The jurors agreed with the claims of all 12 families that, in any event, the state was liable for the dangerous condition of state property along Pacific Coast Highway in the Big Rock area and for maintaining a nuisance.

Chiate said he and Norton plan to go to court on Monday to ask for a trial to determine the actual amount of damages due their clients, who were taken to trial before more than 200 other plaintiffs because of their ages.

It was unclear how the more than 200 other cases will be affected by Thursday’s verdict finding that the state should share blame with the county and by the Hansch case ruling that the county alone was at fault.

Attorneys for Caltrans were not available for comment.

But plaintiffs’ attorney Chiate said, “We contend this (finding the state liable) sets a precedent for all the other cases.”

Norton said he believes that the Hansch case established the county’s liability in all the cases so that there will be no need to take that issue to trial. But he conceded that the county’s attorneys probably would disagree with him on that.

As for what he called the “over-70” cases in which the jury ruled Thursday, he said he felt it will provide a guideline as to the state’s liability in each of the other cases because the elderly owners’ homes were scattered randomly throughout the slide area.