Deal Reached to Settle Suit on Landlside

More than two years after a massive landslide crushed homes and property values at in a tiny beachfront community north of Ventura, landowners have quietly settled a lawsuit they filed against the cliff-top ranch above them.

Lawyers for the 112 property owners in La Conchita have agreed to take unspecified monetary payments from the La Conchita Ranch Co., plaintiffs’ lawyer John F. “Mickey” McGuire said Wednesday.

“I think both sides are happy to put this litigation behind them,” agreed Frank Sabaitis, attorney for the ranch company.

But both lawyers refused to reveal details of the settlement. La Conchita residents, afraid to jeopardize the pact, also remained tight-lipped.

The crumbled roofs of some of the nine homes destroyed in the landslide still poke through weed-infested dirt, and county-issued “geologic hazard” signs still dot outside walls and garage doors.

John Colpitts, a 30-year resident who did not join in the suit, said property values continue to suffer. Anyone looking to sell must find someone willing to pay cash, he said.

No one can get a loan to buy in the area, he said, and getting insurance is next to impossible.

“I do feel sorry about the people that lost everything,” he said. “There’s more under that hill than you know. There’s five or six houses that are completely covered.”

The hillside that towers over La Conchita collapsed in a drenching rain on March 4, 1995. Some 600,000 tons of earth surged downhill, smashing and burying nine houses, damaging several others and sending property values communitywide into a downward spiral.

Although the site had seen several lesser landslides in the past century, homeowners quickly pointed fingers uphill at the La Conchita Ranch Co., which for years had been growing citrus and avocado trees in cliff-top groves.

They filed a suit in Ventura County Superior Court alleging that years of over-watering by the ranch had weakened the earth above their homes.

The suit sought unspecified damages and asked the court to order the ranch to clean up the mess and stabilize the hill.

The lawyers finally were able to resolve all the claims, McGuire said. But the negotiation process had gone slowly, at best.

After nearly two years’ preparation, Ventura County Superior Court Judge William Peck gave the case preferential scheduling status in April because some plaintiffs were 70 or older, McGuire said.

The judge put the lawyers on four-hour notice to be ready for trial, and that spurred them to begin negotiating, McGuire and Sabaitis said.

“At first it didn’t look like anything could be reached, but we started a process of demands and offers, demands and offers,” McGuire said. “And when we would balk, the judge would say, ‘Let’s get ready to come down to the courtroom,’ and we’d start moving boxes, and all of a sudden another offer had been made.”

Times correspondent Richard Warchol contributed to this story.