Final Lawsuits From Massacre Are Dismissed : Courts: The four cases, involving survivors and relatives in the 1984 McDonald’s slayings, had grown stale, a judge says.

The last lawsuits stemming from the 1984 massacre at a San Ysidro McDonald’s restaurant were dismissed Tuesday, bringing to a close the final legal chapter from the worst single-episode slaying in the nation’s history.

In a brief hearing, San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell dismissed four suits, each filed in 1985 but never brought to trial, saying the cases were stale. State law allows a judge to dismiss any case more than 5 years old that has not been taken to trial.

The four cases, brought on behalf of four girls who were wounded or who lost relatives in the slayings, languished after two test cases--filed collectively on behalf of dozens of victims or survivors--proved unsuccessful, lawyers said Tuesday. The five-year deadline expired last year on the four suits, but formal dismissal wasn’t asked for until Tuesday.

“It’s the end of a very long road, the end of a very tragic incident in the history of this city and county,” Leslie J. Girard, a deputy San Diego city attorney, said after the hearing.

The massacre took place July, 18, 1984. Having told his wife that he was “going hunting humans,” James Oliver Huberty walked into a crowded McDonald’s on West San Ysidro Boulevard packing an Uzi semiautomatic rifle, a shotgun and a pistol, then opened fire.

Huberty, an unemployed drifter from Ohio, killed 21 people, 11 of them under age 18. He injured 15 others, nine of them under 18. The blood bath ended when Huberty was killed by a police sharpshooter.

The episode prompted six lawsuits, including the four dismissed Tuesday, which were filed June 6, 1985, on behalf of individual victims or survivors of the massacre.

The two other suits were the test cases, neither of which could overcome legal obstacles.

One suit targeted the city, contending that San Diego police were negligent because they waited too long to begin rescue work.

But, in 1987, the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that the law did not support that claim because police incur liability only after doing something to cause victims to rely on them, and then by negligence increase the danger to the victims. That was not the case in the massacre, the court said, dismissing the suit against the city.

In the other case, survivors went after McDonald’s, claiming that private property owners in high-risk areas have a duty to protect visitors. In 1987, the 4th District court spoke again, ruling that the shootings were an unforeseeable event, and that it would have been unreasonable for the fast-food chain to expect and prepare for it.

The four remaining suits “just sat around” and “never went anywhere,” Deputy City Atty. Girard said, because “they involved the same issues.”

Jon H. Levenstein, a Los Angeles lawyer who brought the suits, did not return a phone call Tuesday.

The four cases were filed against the city and county of San Diego, McDonald’s, Huberty’s estate, Huberty’s wife and others, according to court records.

They were brought on behalf of Aurora Pena and Imelda Perez, children who were wounded in the shootings, and Olga Wright and Juana Perez, whose relatives were killed in the massacre, according to court files and lawyers involved in the litigation.

The San Diego County counsel’s office brought the formal request for dismissal. Deputies there noticed that the four cases could be dismissed because they had not been brought to trial within five years of the filing date, or by June 6, 1990, Deputy County Counsel David Florance said Tuesday.