Council Denies $500,000 Eminent-Domain Claim

A San Juan Capistrano man is seeking roughly $500,000 in damages from the city for "purposely" delaying the development of medical offices on Avenida Cerritos—a claim the City Council denied Tuesday night. 

"The project was a lifelong dream" of Dr. Victor V. Cachia—a foot and ankle surgeon who founded Aloha Foot and Ankle Associates in Mission Viejo and Irvine—his attorney Charles S. Krolikowski wrote in a complaint filed April 29 in Orange County Superior Court. Krolikowski represented the in another land development case, which the council recently settled for $6.3 million.

Now that the council has denied the claim against the Planning Commission and the city itself, Krolikowski may proceed in filing a lawsuit.

The complaint alleges that Cachia spent more than 18 months wrangling with the Design Review Committee over blueprints, which he ultimately redesigned at the city's request and at a "significant" cost. When Cachia turned in his revised plans to the Design Review Committee two years after he first submitted preliminary blueprints, he was told his original design was preferred. 

He obtained initial approval but in September 2008 was told, reportedly for the first time,  that the project was inconsistent with San Juan's long-term planning documents. The complaint says the city unilaterally revoked its approval and told Cachia the project could not be built. 

Krolikowski contends that the city "knew of this alleged inconsistency before" September 2008 and "only raised it to further delay and inhibit plaintiffs from timely proceeding with the project."

He argues that these actions interfered with the Cachias' "prospective economic advantage" and constitute a taking of the land—in other words, eminent domain.