Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County Superior Courtr Judge Yvette M. Palazuelos directed Mohamed Hadid and his companies Coldwater Development LLC and Lydda Lud LLC to allow hikers to use the popular Hastain Trail across his private property in Franklin Canyon. Hadid has been ordered to stop “interfering with the public recreational use” of the trail, which runs across nearly half of the 97 acres he owns next to Franklin Canyon Park between the San Fernando Valley and Beverly Hills and to to “remove all items,” including fences and equipment, from the portion of the trail that traverses Hadid’s land and leads to a peak with sought-after views. The L.A. Times notes:

“All of us just felt that it was the right thing that this land should be saved,” said Ellen Scott, whose grassroots group Friends of Hastain Trail sued Hadid’s companies.

Hadid has designed and built over a dozen Ritz-Carlton hotels and many Beverly Hills mega-mansions.

In an interview last year, Hadid told The Times that he wanted to build six or seven houses on the ridgeline and envisioned a mix of luxury Mediterranean and contemporary-style homes, structured to blend into the mountainside. He brought in bulldozers, erected barriers and essentially blocked hikers from walking the complete 2.3-mile loop that climbs on a fire road through lush shrub-land to the ridge.

The attorney, Eric Edmunds, for the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which had joined Scotts organization in the lawsuit “…said private property could be presumed to be for public use if members of the public had been using it unimpeded for five consecutive years before 1972, when a state law changed the rule.”

In the trial, a number of hikers testified that their use of the trail goes back decades and “…preceded the 1972 legal change. James Goller, 55, testified that he had used the trail since he was about 7 years old, hiking with fellow Cub Scouts and having time with his father. Today, he mountain bikes there each morning.”

Judge Palazuelos also viewed the trail, with its panoramic views, at the request of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, an outing that Edmunds believes was critical in the judge’s decision.

-Bill at

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