In a tentative ruling posted this week, an L.A. County Superior Court judge granted a motion dismissing a writ that’s part of a legal effort filed by a neighbor of the Wiley Canyon Project seeking to stop the development.
The court heard arguments on the matter Wednesday in Downtown Los Angeles, with Judge Jon Takasugi expected to set a case management conference once his formal ruling is submitted. The case is due back in court in September, based on records available online.
The controversial Wiley Canyon plans include 232 condos in two-story buildings, and 120 senior assisted-living units to be built west of Wiley Canyon Road, between Calgrove Boulevard and Hawkbryn Avenue.
R. Weston Monroe, who lives near the property, mentioned a few concerns with the plans during the public hearing process, but his lawsuit was not centered around his concerns about the project’s designs — it was over the city’s process.
Monroe’s suit claimed the city’s process was “fatally flawed,” as it entitled the project to an entity, Wiley Canyon LLC, for which he could find no physical registry or valid online records, at the time of the project’s approval.
It was ultimately procedural grounds that prompted Takasugi to grant the motion to dismiss in his tentative ruling.
The “specially appearing” attorneys representing the interests of the project — which is on property now owned by the Burbank-based Zello Group — said Monroe’s complaint was the effort that had a “fatal jurisdictional failure,” according to Takasugi’s online posting.
Takasugi stated in his ruling that the city had entitled the project to Wiley Canyon LLC in its notice of determination, but Monroe, the petitioner, failed to mention that entity anywhere in his original filing, nor any as-yet unnamed “DOE” defendants, instead naming Royal Clark Development Co. LLC, which opposing counsel claimed was unrelated.
That entity was previously associated with Tom Clark, the developer who presented the Wiley Canyon project to the Santa Clarita City Council. He died in January.
When recognizing the issue, Monroe refiled, but Takasugi cited three reasons why that won’t work: one, “substituting one distinct legal entity for another is not the correction of an ‘incorrect name’” under civil code; two, Monroe can’t “correct” a name to include DOES 1-20 when the original, filed petition contained no named DOE defendants; and three, Wiley Canyon was not named in the original Petition — in any form — within the 30-day window following the notice of determination, as required by the California Environmental Quality Act.
Neither Monroe nor the owners of the property responded to a request for comment on this story.
An online listing for the property that was posted in May, about six months after the city’s entitlement, indicated the Wiley Canyon property and its entitlements are now up for sale with an asking price of $46 million.
