Drama Is Out of Sight
But as all alert residents know, lawyers and City Hall-types have been furiously busy for several years trying some would say desperately to clear the downtrodden street for the day 3 or so years from now when the first Expo light rail train will come rumbling through
For residents of Culver City, a reaction to this mornings findings depends on how you have felt the last two years about City Hall buying out the owners of businesses that were operating in aging buildings left over from an earlier, less ambitious era.
The first artifact that fairly leaps into view is a humble chalkboard.
Posted at the entry to his late business, it was on this old-fashioned board that the ousted entrepreneur Patrick Vorceak, owner of Metal Art, defiantly wrote:
Keep Out
Dogs,
Thieves,
Redevelopment Personnel
Mr. Vorceak etched that well-remembered epitaph last winter. In the spring, nearly a half-year ago, he was bought out, against his will.
Which brings us to this afternoons subject, the business owner Marc Chiat, the final entrepreneur still standing, figuratively, definitely not literally, on Exposition Boulevard.
A businessman with an artistic dimension, Mr. Chiat and his family have been in the habit of spending part of the year in Europe and part in Culver City.
A Game of Tag?
This seems to have created a dicey situation for City Hall and its off-site lawyer for the occasion, Bruce Gridley.
Mr. Gridley is known as an uncommonly cordial attorney, open-faced, accessible.
But he has been chasing the decidedly inaccessible Mr. Chiat for well over a year. That would wind anyone. Serving papers to Mr. Chiat sparked enough zig-zagging turns to fill a very large page.
It has not been unlike chasing a shadow in the dark.
Is It Called Stalling?
As you may recall, Mr. Gridley said, Mr. Chiat did not even acknowledge he had been served for almost 6 months. Although his attorney was quick to point out he needed to have copies of each and every pleading, Mr. Chiat did not want this matter to progress quickly.
Instead, he was able to delay because of that desire. There was a challenge to the sufficiency of the service, and later to the Red Dog Films service, and that challenge took some time to pass through.
Regardless of its denouement, this colorful, sometimes zany, case probably will be the first one Mr. Gridley relates to his future grandchildren.
The Best
Mr. Chiats lawyer is Robert Silverstein, the redwood of the eminent domain forest. He has mastered all of the tactics of the lawyers and operatives from the city government side of the eminent domain wars en route to becoming one of the premier legal minds in his field.
Mr. Gridley recently was reviewing a bulging volume of legally based delays that City Hall has endured since Mr. Chiat and his family ostensibly left Culver City more than a year ago.
He sounded pleased, even relieved, to be courtroom-bound.
Next up is a hearing on Monday, Oct. 29, pitting Mr. Gridley and City Hall against Mr. Silverstein and Mr. Chiat in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.
This is the first of two court dates this autumn.
After a substantial amount of bobbing and weaving by the Chiat camp which is casting one eye on the November 08 election and potential relief from present eminent domain law Mr. Gridley characterizes it as the final showdown of its kind. This case regards Culver Citys right to acquire the property, even if against the owners will.
No Name-Calling
Mannerly and ever polite, Mr. Gridley courteously declined to label Mr. Silversteins strategy as delaying tactics. Mr. Silverstein would have to judge that, he told the newspaper.
Mr. Gridley does not believe that the Chiat-Silverstein team can keep the case going for 14 more months, until the election a year from November when a new attempt to defang the states eminent domain laws is expected to be on the ballot.
Mr. Gridley expects the final gasp of the case to come in a court hearing on Monday, Dec. 17. The value of Mr. Chiats property is scheduled to be determined on that date.
