WOODLAND HILLS : Warner Ridge Case’s Effects to Be Studied

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday authorized spending $25,000 to hire a Westside law firm to study the effect of the Warner Ridge litigation on the city’s planning process.

The money will go to the law firm of Hall & Phillips, which has already been paid $30,000 by the city for work on the controversial Warner Ridge case. The city settled this litigation--brought against it by the owner of the 21.5-acre Warner Ridge site in Woodland Hills--in January after losing a series of court decisions.

The loss of the case seriously challenges some of the city’s longstanding planning practices. It has already inspired three other lawsuits accusing the city of failing to bring zoning ordinances into conformity with community plans--the legal argument the courts sustained in favor of the Warner Ridge developers.

In the Warner Ridge case, the council was accused of acting illegally when it zoned the property for single-family housing use, although the site was designated in the Community Plan for commercial development of the type the city had tried to prevent the landowners from building.