NORTH LAKEPORT, Calif. – Forty-one property owners in a north Lakeport subdivision where a landslide this spring destroyed several homes and led to the voluntary evacuation of many more have filed tort claims alleging the county of Lake is to blame for the slide.
The tort claims – totaling 214 pages – were filed July 3 with the county of Lake by property owners in the Lakeside Heights subdivision, located off of Hill Road across from Sutter Lakeside Hospital.
Each claim is seeking damages in excess of $5 million, but according to Michael Green of the Santa Rosa law firm Abbey, Weitzenberg, Warren & Emery – which is representing all of the subdivision's property owners – a total dollar amount for all of the claims hasn't yet been determined.
“At this point it’s too early to say, there’s been a number of homes completely destroyed,” he said.
Green added that it's unclear at this point whether all of the homes will be red-tagged.
“It’s a tragic situation,” he said.
County Counsel Anita Grant said the claims have been sent to the county's third-party administrator.
Such claims follow a process that includes a 45-day period in which the county may take action. During that time, the county's third-party administrator, the George Hills Co., either accepts or rejects the claim, according to the steps in the process.
If rejected – and such claims often are – the landowners would then have six months to file suit against the county.
The filing may be a first for the sheer size and number of claims lodged against the county.
“I cannot remember any time when this many claims have been received involving the same allegations/circumstances,” Grant said.
The claims filed against the county on July 3 were lodged by James Andrews, Argonaut Properties LLC (two claims, one by and through its agent, Mark Tanti, a second by and through its agent, James Andrews), Carol Blair, Terry Blair, Alberta Diaz, Lois Deuchar, Robert Deuchar, Blanka Doren, Randall Fitzgerald, Jose Martinez Florez, Jonathan Gibson, Rachell Gibson, Manpreet Gill, Anton Herling (two claims), Floyd Hollenback, Kory Hudson, Garey Hurn, Fred Johnson, Vernetta Johnson, Mike Kropa, Lakeside Heights Homeowners Association (through its president, Robert Deuchar), Odell Landers III, Paul Loewen, Sheryl Loewen, Lam Mai, Daniel Malugani, Marian Malugani, Kevin Nguyen, Taryn Norton, Nanette Ruth, Paul Ruth, Roderick Schnabl Jr., Jagtar Singh, Robin Spivey, Scott Spivey, Nancy Steenburgh, Tyrone Steenburgh, Mark Tanti, Heidi Thomason and Eleanor Young.
The tort claims were taken to the Board of Supervisors for a closed session discussion on Tuesday.
Searching for the source
This past March, large cracks began to open up along Lancaster Road, which runs through the 29-home hilltop subdivision of mostly Tudor-style homes first developed in the early 1980s.
Over the next two months seven homes were red-tagged and about 10 others were voluntarily evacuated as the fissures in the earth widened, causing one home to fall into a hole, another to essentially split in half and the back of one home to fall off as its deck fell away with the hillside.
The ground was determined to be saturated, and the county had four leak tests conducted over a three-month period to try to find the source of the water.
The first test, conducted March 25 by Specialized Utility Services Program, a subsidiary of California Rural Water Association, suggested a 2-inch irrigation line owned by the Lakeside Heights homeowner’s association possibly was the culprit.
The next three leak tests were carried out by Utility Services Associates.
Testing on May 9-10 revealed two leaks within the county-maintained water system, while another survey on May 25 found a small leak in a valve on a service road. The fourth leak test on June 16 found a small leak at a service connection for a vacant lot, with another possible small leak detected by a microphone.
While the leak tests were taking place, in April the Board of Supervisors declared a local emergency and sought a state emergency proclamation from the governor in an effort to get additional funding and assistance to address the landslide.
That same month the Board of Supervisors authorized Special Districts Administrator Mark Dellinger to hire a civil sanitary engineer to come up with a design for moving the damaged infrastructure at Lakeside Heights, approving a $350,000 emergency loan for the work.
Dellinger reported last month that state grant funds the county is receiving may cover the costs.
The county was notified June 18 that Gov. Jerry Brown declined the emergency proclamation request.
What the claims allege
The claims allege the county, its Special Districts department and other departments as yet unknown to the property owners either participated in the planning, design and construction of the public water and sewer system or accepted the system into its districts at some point before March 2013.
Further, the claimants allege that the public water system serving the subdivision “failed in that numerous breaks occurred and/or existed in said public water system such that a substantial flow of water, over some unknown period of time, leaked into the land/hillside.”
The claims state that it's “a direct and proximate result” of that water system failure that water leaked into the hillside and destabilized it.
The landslide, subsidence and earth movement that began in March 2013 subsequently damaged homes, land and improvements, as well as diminishing their value, according to the claims.
Green and his law firm were approached by property owners in the subdivision at about the same time that the county began trying to mitigate the subdivision's landslide, he said.
In the process of building the case to date, Green estimated that “several thousand” documents have been gathered, with more expected through public records act requests and legal discovery.
Based on the investigation so far and the information that's currently available, “It’s our conclusion that the county is responsible,” Green said.
“The county lines have dumped a significant amount water into the hillside,” he said.
The Lakeside Heights development has had a long series of developers, some of them running into legal trouble – such as Ken Baker, charged in 1988 for dealings associated with Lakeside Heights in which he stole money from companies and individuals – or having issues with government agencies for failing to follow state and local development rules, as was the case with the late Leonard Jay, according to documents obtained by Lake County News.
While Green couldn't say at this point who else might become the target of the property owners' legal action, he did say possible defendants won't include past developers, as all of the current issues are being attributed by the property owners to the water in the hillside.
He asserted that the subdivision – first developed in the 1980s – hasn't had problems until now due to the hillside saturation.
John Jensen contributed to this report.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.