Malibu Sues MRCA Over Ownership of Two Hiking Trails
City claims Winding Way and Murphy Way easements transferred to Malibu at incorporation in 1993, voiding a later transfer to the parks agency.
Malibu has sued the MRCA again — this time over the ownership of two private roads that have become enormously popular hiking trails, causing traffic dangers on PCH.
The lawsuit is against the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, the MRCA, and its sister organization, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.
Winding Way and Murphy Way are the issue right now, but other MRCA trails in other canyons are also in question.
They are dead-end streets across private property, not owned by the government. The MRCA claims that its ownership of land at the top of the streets grants it a public easement — a right to open the streets up to the public.
And in this age of Instagram, the streets have become Instagram destinations, with hundreds of people daily walking across private property. Those guests are parking along PCH, where there is no safe place to walk on the road or to cross it.
One person was killed on PCH at Winding Way last February.
The city says there is a long-documented pattern of unsafe and inadequate trail management by the MRCA. Malibu claims that, as a municipal government, it took ownership of the easements when the city incorporated in 1993. That would make a property transfer to the MRCA — attempted by Los Angeles County in 1998 — void.
The lawsuit seeks quiet title, an order by the court to transfer ownership of the trails from the county and the MRCA to the city.
There has been no early reaction from the MRCA.