CALABASAS : Court Clears Way for Bid by Conservancy to Get Campus

A state appeals court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to proceed with its legal fight to seize Soka University’s scenic Calabasas campus for use as parkland.

Overturning a Ventura County judge’s decision, the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that Soka’s objections to the conservancy’s legal attack should be raised in formal condemnation proceedings, not in separate court challenges.

Soka lawyers had sought to avoid condemnation proceedings by arguing that the conservancy did not have proper authority to start those proceedings.

Conservancy staff counsel Liz Cheadle called the ruling a “major victory. We’re extremely happy to have a unanimous court decide, as we have said all along, that the case should be down in Los Angeles County.”

Soka spokesman Jeff Ourvan characterized the decision as “not unexpected. The conservancy won on a legal technicality this time,” he said. “It’s far from a winning run. It’s more like they squeezed out a single in the bottom of the ninth.”

Ourvan said Soka administrators and lawyers are discussing whether to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court or to argue their case in condemnation proceedings, which could begin later this year in Los Angeles County Superior Court.