Mount Saint Mary's University and the J. Paul Getty Trust have tentatively settled a lawsuit arising from a dispute about an easement being used by school construction vehicles.
The Los Angeles Superior Court complaint brought by the Catholic liberal arts university sought an injunction permitting MSMU to use the easement without further interference, plus unspecified damages.
On Thursday, the parties filed a joint notice with Judge Timothy P. Dillon informing him that the conditions of the accord are expected to be met within 60 days. No terms were divulged, and the judge scheduled a status conference for Oct. 2.
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In their earlier court papers, attorneys for the Getty Trust and Getty Center, a neighbor to MSMU, alleged that MSMU's descriptions of the easement were "ambiguous and internally inconsistent," and that the allegations of Getty's alleged ongoing interference were "bare legal conclusions" that left defense attorneys uncertain how to respond. They sought dismissal of the case in a hearing last August, but the judge instead ruled the case could move forward.
A minute order from the hearing stated that the parties had agreed to mediate the dispute.
In their court papers filed in advance of the hearing, MSMU lawyers denied their claims were unclear.
"Getty feigns confusion and uncertainty about MSMU's complaint and the express easement for which MSMU seeks to quiet title, but Getty knows exactly what MSMU seeks," the university lawyers maintain in their court papers. "This court should reject Getty's latest attempt to strip MSMU of its recorded property rights."
The lawsuit "could not be any more clear" that MSMU seeks to quiet title to the easement that was deeded to it in 1929 and later corrected in 1930 and 1939," the school's attorneys further contended in their court papers.
Getty took title to its property in 1983 with record notice of MSMU's easement and never questioned MSMU's easement rights until recently, the MSMU lawyers maintained in their court papers.
The university has a mostly female student body and previously obtained approval from the city of Los Angeles to build a state-of-the-art wellness pavilion that will provide its students with a gym, physical therapy lab, dance and cycling studios, plus multiple other amenities dedicated to health and well-being, according to the suit.
In 2017, MSMU informed the Getty Trust, which owns the adjacent property, that it was considering exercising its rights in an express easement through Getty's property for access related to construction of the pavilion, the suit states. The trust was initially receptive, but the next year became cool to the idea, according to the suit brought in March 2023.
Getty, which operates a museum with a multibillion-dollar endowment, raised "baseless procedural defenses to MSMU's irrefutable easement rights," including that the easement was either abandoned, eliminated due to changes over time or extinguished by Getty through adverse possession, the suit stated.
Even after MSMU decided not to use the easement in connection with the pavilion construction, Getty continued to deny MSMU's right to it, the suit stated.
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