A local attorney who is usually involved in lawsuits against the City of Malibu has joined the city in a multiagency lawsuit against Ahmanson.
By P.G. O’Malley/Special to The Malibu Times
In what may seem an ironical twist of events, Frank P. Angel, an attorney who is seen as a thorn in the side of developers and sometimes city staff, has joined the lawsuit against the Ahmanson Ranch project-on the same side as the City of Malibu.
Just last week, Angel, on the behalf of the Sierra Club, filed a suit against Malibu over a long-planned bed and breakfast inn, one of many the attorney has pursued against the city and developers here over the years. (See story, “Sierra Club sues city” above.)
The city of Calabasas recently added Angel to its legal team for its suit against Ventura County over the 3,050-home Ahmanson Ranch project, a suit which the cities of Malibu, Agoura and Thousand Oaks are part of. The Sierra Club is also part of the lawsuit along with the National Resources Defense Council and Los Angeles County.
Although he has been described as “tenacious” and “dogged,” Angel recently lost a case on behalf of Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin before the Planning Commission. Angel disputed findings of an outside consultant and Malibu’s city biologist, and argued the project the Brolins objected to violated the city’s code regarding ESHAs (environmentally sensitive habitat areas) and that it blocked the primary view from their home.
Angel lost on both points.
Angel will be sharing legal duties for Calabasas with Richard Terzian of the Los Angeles firm of Bannan, Green, Frank and Terzian, which also specializes in land use. Terzian was formerly an attorney for the City of Malibu.
The bulk of the job will be representing Calabasas in the multi-agency suit filed in January against Ventura County. The agencies are challenging the Ventura supervisors’ decision to certify a supplement to the original Environmental Impact Report for the Ahmanson Ranch project when it approved the 3,050 home, two golf course development at the junction of the 101 Freeway and Las Virgenes Road last December.
Malibu opposes the project because of concerns over pollution of local waters from upstream development and worries over increased Z traffic (cross canyon traffic).
Terzian has jumped in with both feet, representing Calabasas at a hearing on May 27 in a suit brought by the city and a group of private individuals alleging violations of the Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law, and the public’s right to due process on the part of Ventura County planning commissioners who visited the site of the Ahmanson Ranch development during the course of holding hearings on the Supplemental EIR (SEIR). Riverside County Superior Court Judge Dallas Homes sustained the Ventura County court, ruling that there was no Brown Act violation or any due process violations but gave Calabasas 30 days to amend its complaint on these two issues. (Former Calabasas attorney Katherine Stone secured a change of venue to Riverside County.)
Although the judge threw out the Brown Act claim, he allowed the due process claim to go forward.
“The significance is the two overlap,” Terzian said.
Angel was not in court on May 27, and neither Angel nor Terzian would speculate about how they thought they would be working together.