Loading Photo Galleries ...
This undated aerial photo shows the JCM Farming compound in the unincorporated community of Vista Santa Rosa. Hot air balloonists who fought the east valley olive farm’s lawsuit for more than two-and-a-half years now want to make the farm’s owners pay more than $330,000 in attorney’s fees. / Submitted photo
Attorney Robert Gilliland, Jr., who represented balloonists in a case against JCM Farming Inc., announces that the lawsuit had been dropped on an Aug. 17 news conference outside the Larson Justice Center in Indio. At left are balloon pilot Denni Barrett of Magical Adventures and Fantasy Balloon Flight's Cindy and Steve Wilkinson. / Crystal Chatham, The Desert Sun
Catch up on the case
Read past coverage online at mydesert.com/balloon.
Read more Saturday
For more on this story, see Saturday’s print edition of The Desert Sun and MyDesert.com
More
Hot air balloonists who fought an east valley olive farm’s lawsuit for more than two-and-a-half years now want to make the farm’s owners pay more than $330,000 in attorney’s fees.
Attorney Robert Gilliland Jr. filed a motion Thursday in Riverside County Superior Court in Indio, seeking to force lawsuit plaintiff JCM Farming Inc. to pay $337,301 in attorney fees to his clients, balloonist defendants Steve and Cynthia Wilkinson of Palm Desert and their Fantasy Balloon Flights and Shiho Seki and Dennis Barrett and their Magical Adventure Balloon Rides, a Temecula-based company that operates in the Coachella Valley.
The amount includes attorney fees racked up by Seki and Barrett prior to Gilliland’s entry into the case in February, and the costs of Gilliland’s pro-bono representation of the balloonists since, the attorney said.
“My clients would like to see some justice here,” Gilliland said.
JCM Farming, owned by John C. and Carol Marelli and their daughter, Marilena Marrelli, all of Solana Beach, claimed in their lawsuit filed in March 2009 that 14 balloonists or balloon companies, and a pest control flight operator, were creating a nuisance, privacy invasion and safety hazard by flying too low over their 80-acre olive farm off Avenue 54 between Monroe and Jackson streets in the Vista Santa Rosa community.
Over more than two years of litigation, a dozen of the balloonists either went out of business, had default judgments entered against them or agreed to JCM's demands that they stop flying near its property. But the Wilkinsons and Seki and Barrett remained in the case, steadfastly denying they’d ever flown over JCM’s elaborate, high-walled compound at a height below Federal Aviation Administration requirements.
When the FAA twice investigated JCM Farming’s complaints of low overflights and found no evidence to support them, the Marrellis also sued the FAA in federal court, later expanding their defendants list to “The United States of America” and other federal agencies and officials. In Riverside County, they later added as a defendant Windermere Real Estate, a company that has advertised on hot air balloons in the valley.
On Aug. 15 — two days before a court-ordered inspection inside JCM’s walled estate by balloonist defendants was to occur — JCM dropped the lawsuit without explanation.
JCM sought “to create its own private no-fly zone,” usurping the authority of the U.S. government to regulate airspace, Gilliland states in his latest motion.
“(JCM) was focused on a singular goal in this litigation: eliminating the ballooning industry in the Coachella Valley,” Gilliland’s motion states, adding they were nearly successful in achieving that goal.
An economic study commissioned by Gilliland showed hot air ballooning contributed $9.7 million to the Coachella Valley’s economy at its peak in the 2005-06 tourist season, but that impact had dropped to $523,000 by last season. Weakness in the economy and tourism could only account for between 15 and 35 percent of the total decline, local economist Michael Bracken, who conducted the study, earlier told The Desert Sun. Gilliland contends JCM’s lawsuit caused the 95-percent drop in ballooning activity.
By defending JCM’s lawsuit, Gilliland argues, the defendants provided benefit to the public through reaffirming the public’s right to use the navigable airspace; saving the ballooning industry in the Coachella Valley; and helping to stop the “economic devastation” JCM’s lawsuit caused in the Coachella Valley. And under the California Code of Civil Procedure, “A court may award attorneys' fees to a successful party against one or more opposing parties in any action which has resulted in the enforcement of an important right affecting the public interest,” Gilliland’s motion states.
JCM attorney Andrew Rauch could not immediately be reached for comment.
Gilliland said JCM’s lawsuit “has been a black eye to the legal system.”
“Where a plaintiff files a questionable lawsuit, and drags defendants through the legal process over two years, and then abruptly decides to dismiss the case — a case that impacted the community at large — then there should be financial consequences to that plaintiff,” he said.
A hearing on the balloonist defendants’ motion is set for Nov. 29 in Riverside County Superior Court in Indio.
