Mount Saint Mary’s University won a round in court when a judge overruled a legal challenge by the J. Paul Getty Trust to a lawsuit arising from a dispute about an easement being used by school construction vehicles.
The Los Angeles Superior Court complaint brought by the Catholic liberal arts university seeks an injunction permitting MSMU to use the easement without further interference, plus unspecified damages.
Attorneys for the Getty Trust and Getty Center, a neighbor to MSMU, alleged in court papers that MSMU’s descriptions of the easement were “ambiguous and internally inconsistent” and that the allegations of Getty’s alleged ongoing interference were “bare legal conclusions” that left defense attorneys uncertain how to respond.
On Wednesday, Judge Timothy Patrick Dillon overruled a motion by Getty Trust attorneys urging dismissal of the case and said the lawsuit can move forward for now. A minute order from the hearing states the parties have agreed to mediate the dispute.
In their court papers filed in advance of the hearing, MSMU lawyers denied their claims were unclear.
“Getty feigns confusion and uncertainty about MSMU’s complaint and the express easement for which MSMU seeks to quiet title, but Getty knows exactly what MSMU seeks,” the university lawyers maintain in their court papers “This court should reject Getty’s latest attempt to strip MSMU of its recorded property rights.”
The lawsuit “could not be any more clear” that MSMU seeks to quiet title to the easement that was deeded to it in 1929 and later corrected in 1930 and 1939,” the university attorneys further contended in their court papers.
Getty took title to its property in 1983 with record notice of MSMU’s easement and never questioned MSMU’s easement rights until recently, the MSMU lawyers maintain in their court papers.
The university has a mostly female student body and previously obtained approval from the city of Los Angeles to build a state-of-the-art wellness pavilion that will provide its students with a gym, physical therapy lab, dance and cycling studios, plus multiple other amenities dedicated to health and well-being, according to the suit.
In 2017, MSMU informed the Getty Trust, which owns the adjacent property, that it was considering exercising its rights in an express easement through Getty’s property for access related to construction of the pavilion, the suit states. The trust was initially receptive, but the next year became cool to the idea, according to the suit brought March 3.
“Even though MSMU’s founders, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, obtained rights in the easement nearly 100 years ago by way of a grant deed, Getty responded by claiming that MSMU somehow has no right to use its easement,” the suit filed March 3 states.
Getty, which operates a museum with a multibillion dollar endowment, raised “baseless procedural defenses to MSMU’s irrefutable easement rights,” including that the easement was either abandoned, eliminated due to changes over time or extinguished by Getty through adverse possession, the suit states.
Although Getty apparently bases its adverse possession claim on a gate the trust built at the base of one of the roads at issue, in reality the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet provided Getty with consent to install the gate “to be an accommodating neighbor” and to help Getty meet the terms of a conditional use permit, according to the suit.
When MSMU advised Getty management that its procedural arguments are groundless, the trust “threatened to inhibit construction of MSMU’s wellness pavilion and challenged MSMU’s rights to its express easement,” according to the suit, which further alleges that Getty also helped spread misinformation that the school’s limited use of the easement would result in the road being opened to traffic from the San Diego (405) Freeway.
Even after MSMU decided not to use the easement in connection with the pavilion construction, Getty continued to deny MSMU’s right to it, the suit states.