Lawsuit filed against UC Board of Regents for planned sale of Hannah Carter Japanese Garden

A suit filed Monday against the UC Board of Regents claims the regents have breached a contract protecting the UCLA Hannah Carter Japanese Garden in Bel Air.

The suit, filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges UCLA’s plans to sell the garden and its removal of items from the garden is a breach of a 1964 contract between the regents and former UC Regents Chair Edward Carter.

Hannah Carter’s children are suing to block the sale of the garden and force UCLA to abide by the agreement to preserve the garden, said John Walton, the attorney representing the heirs in the suit.

“Money is no substitute for the unique, beautiful, historical and cultural garden that the regents promised to retain in its perpetuity,” the suit states.

In 1965, Hannah Carter and her husband Edward Carter donated the garden to the regents. It was designed by Japanese architects and gardeners and includes several valuable items of Japanese origin, according to Daily Bruin archives.

UCLA announced plans in November to auction off the garden.

In a February editorial in the Daily Bruin, Chancellor Gene Block said the university in 1993 “determined that the garden did not serve a teaching or research purpose” and has since been accompanied by rising maintenance costs and issues surrounding parking availability. Maintenance costs are now around $100,000 a year, he said.

“For all these reasons, we concluded we could no longer continue to own the garden while achieving Carter’s vision,” Block wrote.

The announcement of the plans for sale sparked calls for the garden’s protection by conservation groups and the UCLA community. In January, the Garden Conservancy, a national organization, posted what it called a “threatened garden alert” on its website and appealed for preservation.

The suit asserts that the contract between the regents and Carter stated the regents could sell a part of land attached to the garden after Hannah Carter died or moved off the land.

But the contract did not state the regents could sell the garden itself, Carter’s heirs contend.

“UCLA waited for the people who signed the agreement giving the garden to UCLA to die, and then they changed their mind and decided that they didn’t want to keep (the garden) and would rather sell it for money,” Walton said.

The university, however, is confident it has the legal right to proceed with the garden’s sale, university spokesman Steve Ritea said in a statement.

An Alameda Superior Court judge approved the sale of the garden in 2010.

“UCLA strongly disagrees with the mischaracterizations made by opponents of the sale and intends to contest the lawsuit recently filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court,” the statement said.

Walton said he expects UCLA to respond to the suit in a timely manner. If it proceeds to court, it will be decided from there whether UCLA has the legal right to sell the garden, he said.

With contributing reports by Nicole Chiang, Bruin contributor.