Hillside Homeowner Loses Lawsuit Against Ventura

Maybe you really can’t fight City Hall.

That is the message a 79-year-old Ventura woman got this week when a jury rejected her lawsuit demanding that the city reinforce an eroding hillside next to her Brodiea Avenue home.

“I lost. I can’t believe it,” said real estate broker Helen Yunker. “It was a shock to me.”

Yunker spent the last 2 1/2 years trying to convince city engineers that her two-bedroom house was teetering dangerously close to collapse after El Nino rains washed away a chunk of the adjacent hillside in February 1998.

Last year, she sued the city of Ventura, claiming it should pay $550,000 to reinforce the 40-foot slope because it owns the land and once maintained a storm channel there.

But at trial, San Diego attorney Bruce Beach, who represented the city, argued that the undeveloped hillside remains in its natural condition and therefore is not the city’s responsibility.

Beach disputed that the city operated a public project at the site, describing the channel as a natural stream bed that probably was altered by neighboring residents as far back as the 1920s. The channel was rerouted and buried by city workers in 1979.

Beach told jurors in his closing summation last week that the hillside gave way 19 years later as a result of heavy rain, plain and simple.

“That slope failed because of poor soil, a steep slope and a lot of water,” Beach said.

The jury agreed.

Yunker has not decided whether to appeal. She has lived in the 1,850-square-foot house for nearly 25 years and said she cannot afford to fix the neighboring hillside herself.

But she has no plans of moving.

“I don’t know what I’ll do yet,” she said Tuesday, after the verdict came in. “But I’m going to stay in my house until the bitter end.”