A 2019 Ruling Freed Marquez Knolls Remodels From View Covenants. Fire Rebuilds Aren't Remodels.

On a downhill, ocean-facing lot in Marquez Knolls, a house that burned in January 2025 is going back up with more square footage and a taller roofline than the one it replaced. From the lot just above it, the water that used to fill the window is now partly framed by new construction. The owners up the slope did not wait to see how the roofline settled. They filed suit.

That case, still working through Los Angeles Superior Court, is the reason anyone buying a lot, inheriting one, or pulling permits for a rebuild in Marquez Knolls right now needs to read past the listing photos and into the tract's paperwork.

The Covenant Every Deed in the Tract Still Carries

Marquez Knolls was platted across roughly two dozen tracts by the Lachman family in the late 1950s and 1960s, and the sales pitch at the time was the view itself. The developers backed that promise with covenants, conditions and restrictions recorded against the land. Two provisions matter here. Paragraph 1 caps most homes at one story, with a narrow path to a second story if it can be shown the added height will not block a neighboring lot's view. Paragraph 11 goes further, prohibiting any structure "erected" on a lot that unreasonably obstructs the view from another lot in the tract.

These were not decorative language. In 1979, a California Court of Appeal case called Ezer v. Fuchsloch examined a dispute over a tree in the same tract and read the covenants as written to preserve the "view" of the individual lot owners. Courts have treated that intent as controlling ever since, even as the specific reach of Paragraph 11 has been argued over for four decades.

Why Everyone Assumed the Rule Had Gone Quiet

The most recent chapter before this year involved a different Marquez Knolls property, owned at the time by Ardeshir and Tania Tavangarian. Their neighbors, Glenn and Alison Eisen, sued over alterations made to the second story of the Tavangarian home, arguing the changes violated the same view covenants. A trial court agreed, ordered the offending alterations removed, and awarded the Eisens $39,000 in damages for their lost view.

On appeal, the builders argued that neither Paragraph 1 nor Paragraph 11 reaches alterations to a residence that already exists. In a published 2019 opinion, the California Court of Appeal agreed with that narrower reading, at least for this specific circumstance. Paragraph 11's language covers structures "erected," the court reasoned, and that word does not naturally stretch to cover the alteration of a home that is already standing. Renovation and remodeling, in other words, fell outside the covenant's reach.

That ruling traveled through the neighborhood as a kind of shorthand: the view covenants had lost their teeth. Some owners began filing city permit applications for two-story additions on the theory that the CC&Rs were, as one Marquez Knolls Property Owners Association filing later put it, of no further force. The theory rested on one word tucked inside the 2019 opinion, and that word was existing.

The Word That Fire Took Away

A home reduced to ash by a wildfire is not an existing residence. It is a cleared lot. Building on it is not an alteration of something standing. It is the erection of something new, which happens to be the exact activity Paragraph 11 was written to reach in the first place.

That is the argument the plaintiffs made in Rassekhi v. Cheng (Case No. 26STCV02044), filed by trustees representing the Rassekhi, Lipson, and Clinton family trusts against the trustee of the Cheng Trust. The Cheng property, destroyed in the fire, is being rebuilt with a larger footprint and a higher roofline on the downhill side of the tract, and the plaintiffs argue the new structure will unreasonably obstruct their views under the same Paragraph 11 language at issue in Eisen.

The defense moved to dismiss the case, arguing Eisen already settled the question in favor of builders. In June 2026, the court ruled on that motion and sustained it only in part, leaving the core view-obstruction claim intact and allowing the case to move toward trial. The distinction the court drew tracks the reasoning above almost exactly: Eisen's exemption was built around the word "existing," and a fire-destroyed home rebuilt from the foundation up does not qualify. This is a trial court ruling on a motion to dismiss, not a final appellate decision, and the case is still active as of late September 2026. But it reopens, for the specific circumstance defining most current construction in the tract, a question a lot of owners had assumed was closed.

What the City Permit Doesn't Tell You

The Marquez Knolls Property Owners Association has been direct about the gap this creates. The City of Los Angeles does not enforce private CC&Rs, and a building permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety says nothing about whether a project complies with the covenants recorded against the lot. A mayoral executive order issued to speed up post-fire rebuilding allows homes up to 10 percent larger in footprint and height than the structure that burned, and the city will process that permit application on its own timeline, without checking it against Paragraph 1 or Paragraph 11.

MKPOA's position is that the two systems run in parallel and neither one substitutes for the other. A rebuild that fits comfortably inside the mayor's 10 percent allowance can still violate the tract's view covenants if it blocks a neighbor's sightline, and a valid city permit will not protect the owner from a lawsuit over it. The association has set up a voluntary View Impact Analysis process intended to catch these conflicts before plans are finalized rather than after a frame is up, and it has raised a legal fund with an initial goal of $150,000 specifically to support owners pursuing view-protection claims. With roughly 600 lots in the tract subject to CC&Rs and about 300 of them destroyed in the fire, that fund and that review process are aimed at a genuinely large share of the rebuild pipeline still working its way through design and permitting.

What This Means Before You Write an Offer or Break Ground

1. If you are buying a lot to build on or acquiring one for a client, confirm the CC&R language for that specific tract before finalizing architectural plans. MKPOA has noted the tracts are not identical and some have been amended over the years, so the covenant on the parcel next door is not a reliable stand-in for the one on the parcel you are buying.

2. If you are a trustee or executor listing a burned lot or a home mid-rebuild, document whether a View Impact Analysis was filed and what response it drew. A completed sale does not erase the exposure a new owner inherits, and a buyer's counsel will eventually ask the question you did not answer at listing.

3. If you are buying a home that has already been rebuilt or is nearing completion, ask directly whether MKPOA's review concluded and what it found. Eisen's remedy for a completed violation was not just money. It was a court order to remove what had already been built.

None of this turns a Marquez Knolls purchase into something to avoid. It turns it into something to price and document correctly, which is a different exercise than the one most buyers, and more than a few agents, are used to running on a residential lot.

For owners and trustees weighing a Marquez Knolls rebuild or sale against this backdrop, having someone who understands both the transaction and the legal mechanics behind it matters more than usual. The Cilic Group has spent years inside exactly this kind of complexity in the Palisades. Request a confidential consultation before you finalize plans or accept an offer on a Marquez Knolls property.