Restaurateur Settles Claims Against the County

A Dana Point restaurateur agreed Monday to a $380,000 settlement of his claims against the county stemming from a 1980 landslide near his bluff-top restaurant.

David Perrin claimed in a lawsuit that county work on Cove Road in Dana Point undermined his Quiet Cannon Restaurant, which sits atop a 160-foot bluff overlooking the ocean.

The county first claimed that Perrin’s construction of the restaurant was responsible for the slide, but in 1983 the Board of Supervisors decided that county taxpayers would foot the bill to stabilize the slope.

The job was completed in June at a cost of more than $2 million.

The settlement covered Perrin’s claims that he had lost business during the repair work, the cost of some repairs he made after the slide threatened his restaurant, the cost of engineering studies on the bluff and attorney fees, said Byron J. Beam, a lawyer representing the county.

“It’s a settlement I feel comfortable with,” Beam said. “It was a hard-fought fight all the way on both sides.”

The lawsuit, filed in 1980, was complicated by threats by county officials to order the Quiet Cannon closed because of public safety concerns, a legal hornet’s nest over land ownership and a state Supreme Court decision that placed added burdens on the county to guard against further damage to Perrin’s property.

The county owned the land from the ocean to the top of the 160-foot bluff. Perrin leased adjacent land on which he built the restaurant in 1971.

Perrin built the restaurant after buying a 60-year land lease from the owner, Albert Schafer, Beam said.

The division of the settlement between Perrin and Schafer was not disclosed. Several attempts to reach Perrin’s lawyers for comment were unsuccessful.

Beam said he advised supervisors to repair the slope in 1983 after a state Supreme Court decision changed previous law. The case required the owner of unimproved property that contains a potentially dangerous condition to protect the property of a neighbor.

Studies of the cliff after the slide showed that it was unstable and that another slide could occur.

“I recommended that the county make the repairs,” Beam said. “The county could no longer sit on its hands without being exposed to liability.”

The repairs involved two separate contracts that took several years to complete, according to Wendell Hartman, manager of the construction division of the county Environmental Management Agency.

Holes were drilled as far as 90 feet into the cliff face, Hartman said. Cables were attached between the bedrock and a concrete facing to stabilize the cliff. The second contract involved work on Cove Road at the base of the cliff and construction of a concrete wall along the roadway, which was completed two months ago.