Investor Group Sues Pala Indians for Blocking Road to Granite Quarry

A group of Iranian investors seeking to mine black granite in a quarry near the Pala Indian reservation filed suit Wednesday against members of the Pala Tribal Council and Albert Bradford, who owns the Agua Tibia Ranch, charging that they have blocked access to the mine.

The Iranian group, doing business under the California corporation name of Imperial Granite Co., claims that Bradford and the Pala Tribal Council have welded shut a metal gate across the one access road to the quarry they lease.

Imperial Granite is seeking temporary and permanent injunctions against the Pala Indians and Bradford, a court order to remove the gate and any other road obstructions, and damages of about $500 a day since the gate was welded shut early in 1987.

The unnamed road leading to the granite quarry begins at Magee Road, crosses Indian reservation land, the Agua Tibia Ranch and another section of Indian land. It was built by the federal government as a Work Projects Administration project about 1933, according to the suit.

Tribal Council members named as defendants in the suit are Jerry Boisclair, chairman, Henry Smith, Debra Smith, Robert Smith, Teresa Mojado and Jane Blackman. Also listed as defendants are 100 unnamed people, individual members of the Pala band, living on reservation land in the extreme northern part of the county east of Interstate 15.

Boisclair said Wednesday that he is unaware of any formal negotiations with the Imperial Granite officials on use of the road, but Hassan Mirassadi, one of the owners of the mine, said in a statement filed with the North County Superior Court that: “We have spent over a year and a half in seeking vigorously a resolution without success.

“We had been promised time after time by members of the Pala band that they would respond to our settlement proposals, and, in several instances, we were promised action by specific dates,” Mirassadi said in his statement. None of these promises were kept, and we learned, to our regret, that we could not depend upon the defendants to keep their word.”

Charles Renshaw, attorney for Imperial Granite, said that Boisclair “has been running around, spreading rumors” that the Iranians were former officials with the government of the late Shah of Iran and wanted to use the mine property as a secret site for training an Iranian army to overthrow the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Politics Not an Issue

Renshaw has not inquired deeply into his clients’ politics, but he is sure that the group, which includes a former Iranian general who was also a diplomat in Moscow, wants to mine granite, not overthrow governments.

Imperial Granite plans to extract black granite from the quarry and ship it from West Coast ports to Italy, where it is in high demand and low supply, Renshaw said. But, he added, they can’t do a thing until the road is reopened.

Renshaw concedes that the Pala Indian band is a sovereign body that cannot be sued, but, he contends, members of the tribe can be sued in state court as individuals, as can any other residents, “and that is the path we are taking.”

Terry Singleton, an Escondido lawyer who represents the Pala Tribal Council, disagreed.

“Renshaw has been making bellicose noises about this for several years now. He knows better. He is a better lawyer than that,” Singleton said. “We will probably seek a dismissal, or move to transfer it to federal court and dismiss.”

He said he had not seen a copy of the suit but stressed that the members of the tribal counsel named in the action “are as immune to suit as the tribe.”

May Countersue

Singleton said that, after conferring with his clients, “we may consider a suit against them for malicious prosecution.” The suit filed Wednesday in North County Superior Court in Vista is the second road dispute involving the Pala Indians to surface this year. In March, Pala Indians barricaded a road across reservation land to the Stewart Lithia Tourmaline Mine and turned back a bus bearing nearly 50 amateur rock hounds bound for a weekend dig in the gemstone mine’s tailings.

The confrontation occurred after negotiations between representatives of the mine owner and the Indians broke down over the amount to be paid to allow the tours to pass through Indian land.

Indians charged that the mine owner had ceased paying any amount for the weekend tours. Representatives of the German owner of the mine said the Indians wanted to increase the $1-a-head fee to $5. In the earlier dispute, which has not yet been settled, Boisclair said that the reservation inhabitants objected to the behavior of the weekend visitors, their litter and their language. He pointed out that weekday mining at the tourmaline mine was not affected in the dispute.