Caltrans Must Cover Losses to Ousted Church, Business

SANTA ANA — Separate courts have ordered Caltrans to pay a total of nearly $1 million to a church and a motorcycle shop for losses they suffered from the planned widening of the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Tully H. Seymour on Friday awarded $542,502 for attorney fees to the Anaheim Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which was located on West Broadway Street. A jury previously had awarded the church $1.33 million instead of the $722,500 the state Department of Transportation had offered for the property.

In the other case, a Superior Court jury on Monday decided the state owes $362,000 to Burchinal’s Custom and Performance, a motorcycle shop that was forced to move from its Anaheim Boulevard location as a result of the freeway project and eventually went out of business. Burchinal’s, which rented the property, was not offered compensation by Caltrans.

“The state could definitely have handled this business in a way that would have ultimately meant less exposure to the state,” said Mike Leifer, an attorney representing the motorcycle shop.

John C. Murphy, the church’s attorney, echoed those sentiments. “I feel vindicated and the church feels vindicated,” he said. “What it represents is a judicial recognition that Caltrans treated the church in the worst possible way.”

Albert Miranda, a Caltrans spokesman, denied wrongdoing by the agency and downplayed the importance of the verdicts.

“Our position is that we are the watchdogs of the taxpayers’ dollars and we have won some cases as well as been involved in the cases described here,” he said.

Miranda pointed to a case in which he said a judge had ordered no compensation for the owner of a displaced business who had asked for $130,000.

A jury previously had decided the state must pay a mobile telephone business $416,000 instead of $285,000.

The $1.1-billion project will widen 9.5 miles of the Santa Ana Freeway running through Anaheim, Orange, Buena Park and Fullerton.

About 63% of the 222 businesses scheduled to be partially or completely displaced by the project have rejected Caltrans’ offers to purchase their properties, and a number of those cases have resulted in lawsuits. Under normal circumstances, a Caltrans planner has said, about 10% of the business owners in the way of a project challenge the state’s offers for their property.