By CHRISTOPHER WOODARD
Staff Reporter
When National Park Service officials approached Francis Gherini in the late ’80s to buy his family’s sheep ranch on Santa Cruz Island, they offered him $4 million just $2,500 an acre for his share of the property.
Never mind that the 6,300-acre ranch had been in the family since the 1880s, or that there was nothing like it anywhere else along the California coast.
Gherini rejected the offer, but in doing so the former Oxnard attorney was thrust into a battle against a formidable bureaucracy that took his land through an act of Congress.
Now, after a two-decade fight that cost Gherini hundreds of thousands of dollars and took an immeasurable toll on his family, the 84-year-old patriarch has finally won out.
After a three-week trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a jury recently awarded Gherini $12.7 million for his land, close to the $14.2 million Gherini’s appraisers said his 25 percent share of the ranch was worth.
“I feel vindicated,” said Gherini, now 84. “I just felt they weren’t valuing it correctly, that they were just stealing it. It feels very good to see what hopefully will be the end of this.”
Joy Ryan, an attorney who handled the case for the U.S. Justice Department, did not return phone calls. Spokeswoman Cristine Romano would say only that the department hasn’t decided whether to appeal.
Santa Cruz Island, the largest island off the coast of California, is about 25 miles from the mainland of Ventura County. It is considered a treasure trove of rare plants and animals as well as Native-American artifacts.
The eminent domain case began in the 1980s when Congress approved a request by the Park Service to make the island part of Channel Islands National Park.
About 90 percent of the island had already been donated, but the missing link was the 6,300-acre ranch, which was handed down from Gherini’s great, great grandfather, Justinian Caire, a merchant who bought the land after striking it rich selling hardware to Gold Rush miners.
The government offered Gherini and his three elderly siblings $4 million each for their shares of the ranch. Fearing they might not live to see any money, and worried about inheritance taxes, the siblings took the money while Gherini held out.
Then in 1996, Congress passed legislation approving the taking of the remaining property. Gherini filed suit in federal court, arguing the government failed to pay him fair market value. The case finally went to trial in January.
Roger Sullivan, a senior partner for Sullivan, Workman & Dee LLP, a Los Angeles law firm that specializes in eminent domain cases, said his client’s case turned on proving that government appraisers used properties in inland areas like Temecula and Riverside to come up with a comparable land value. Even then, they determined the ranch was worth half as much as the inland sites.
“This property is such a unique place. It’s the only privately owned ranch on an island between San Diego and Washington, and it’s one of the most beautiful properties around,” said Sullivan. “We just argued the ranch is an extremely special place.”
Because Congress took Gherini’s property through legislation, the government didn’t have to deposit its purchase price with the court. That meant Gherini had to scrape up $150,000 of his own money to hire appraisers, biologists, Native-American history experts and others to prove his case.
Andrea Gherini, Francis’ daughter and an attorney who helped represent her father, said the case took a tremendous toll on her family. Her mother suffered a heart attack the night before the trial was to begin and remains in critical condition.
The family never felt the government offer was just.
“You have to have a lot of tenacity to take on the federal government, and my father has that,” she said.
