SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2002
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Volume 1, Issue 101
Santa Monica Daily Press Picked fresh daily. 100% organic news
Privately boarded horses told to giddyup Horses booted from Will Rogers Park over environmental fears BY ANDREW H. FIXMER Daily Press Staff Writer
Efforts to prevent the eviction of privately boarded horses at Will Rogers State Park were side-saddled Friday. Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Terry B. Friedman ruled that removing the privately housed horses in the public park located in the Santa Monica Mountains in Pacific Palisades would not decrease equestrian activities there.
Judge Friedman gave the horses’ owners until April 5 to find new homes for them. Judge Friedman also ruled the state’s parks and recreation department doesn’t have to put a time limit on the temporary removal of the horses — something critics said could create a “permanent temporary” eviction. State officials announced in October that it would suspend overnight horse boarding while a new management plan for the park is developed because they believe the horses are hurting the environment. The state claims that the horses generate nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous, which ecologists fear are chemicals that are being carried by run-off into adjacent streams. “You can see horse manure running down into that creek,” said Steve Capps, the deputy director of commu-
Suit filed against local film producer BY CAROLYN SACKARIASON Daily Press Staff Writer
The family of a Los Angeles man who was killed when a chartered jet crashed in Aspen, Colo. last March filed a wrongful death lawsuit Friday against the plane’s owner and operator, as well as the estates of the pilots. The family of Mario Aguilar, represented by Santa Monica-based attorney Brian Panish, sued Airborne Charter Inc., the company to which the jet was registered and Avjet Corp., which housed the plane in a hangar at Burbank Airport.
“They tried to beat the curfew and hurried a risky landing in Aspen to avoid the expense of getting detoured to a safer, but less convenient airport.”
The passengers, mostly in entertainment and media businesses in the Los Angeles area, had chartered the plane for a weekend birthday party for one of them in the resort town, which was nearing the end of its winter season. Airborne Charter is run by Santa Monica-based Cinergi Pictures founder and producer Andrew G. Vajna, who is responsible for films like “First Blood,” “Total Recall,” “Air America” and “Jacob’s Ladder.” The estates of pilot Robert Frisbie and co-pilot Peter Kowalczyk also are targeted in the suit, which was filed in downtown Los Angeles Superior Court. The families of several other victims have filed similar lawsuits, some of which have been settled, according to Panish. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, claiming the plane was flown “in a negligent, wanton, reckless, tortious and unlawful manner.” See SUIT, page 3
Carolyn Sackariason/Daily Press
Desmond Harding gets ready to return a shot from Johanna Josetsson in the new YMCA’s racquetball courts. The multi-million dollar facility on Sixth Street recently opened.
Voter turnout may be lowest in state history
Plaintiff’s attorney
On March 29, 2001, the 20-year-old Gulfstream twin engine jet, which was en route from Los Angeles to Aspen, slammed into a hillside just 500 yards short of Aspen’s runway in a light snowstorm. All 15 passengers and the three crew members aboard were killed.
LOS ANGELES — California’s primary election may have attracted the lowest voter turnout in state history, officials said Friday. Incomplete figures show that only one in three registered voters cast a ballot on Tuesday. The figure of 33 percent could climb a point or two as counties finish tallying absentee and provisional ballots next week but “it is shaping up to be a historic low,” said Shad Balch, spokesman for Secretary of State Bill Jones. The previous low of 35 percent was recorded in June 1994. Projections on Tuesday called for a turnout of 36 percent. $
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Election officials were disappointed that the surge of patriotism after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks didn’t bump up the vote. “It was our hope that we could translate all that flag-waving into increasing democracy at the ballot box,” Balch said. “That’s what the (soldiers) abroad are fighting to protect.” California’s voter turnout has been falling for three decades but Tuesday’s election may have had additional strikes against it, Balch and others said. The early primary may have caught some people off-guard. California moved its primary from June to March in 2000, but this year was the first time a gubernatorial primary was held that early. $
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See HORSES, page 3
What a racquet
By The Associated Press
since 1988
nications for the state’s department of parks and recreation. “We don’t know the full extent of what’s going on there and that’s why we want the horses out for a bit so we can study this fully. “It was in the discretion of the director to make this decision and it did not constitute any major change in the use of the park,” he added. Genesses Rievera, an 8-year-old Los Angeles girl, along with 34 other plaintiffs and the support of 1,300 petition signing members of the public, filed an injunction in December in Santa Monica Superior Court to prevent the department of parks and recreation, as well as its director, Rusty Areias, from terminating horse boarding and other equestrian activity at the park. They also say it
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