But passing the legal hurdle does not mean a reopening of the beleaguered Glendale cemetery any time soon, city officials said.
"It's going to change day by day, depending on what the findings are," said Zizette Ayad, community relations coordinator with the city manager's office. "But as it stands, it doesn't look like it's going to be open in July."
The concern for the city now is not only the trees, but also the water system and the grass.
"We need the water so more trees don't die, but once we have the water all those weeds will start growing and we have those added maintenance issues…. It's really a catch 22 situation," said Mary Der-Parseghian, an attorney representing families with loved ones buried at Grand View.
Water has been turned off at the cemetery for more than a year due to a severe leak in the pipes, and that has contributed to the cemetery's overly arid state, Ayad said. But even if the leak were fixed, watering the cemetery would make the grass grow — then the city would be dealt a new problem of who would maintain the plant life there, Ayad said.
These concerns would be relatively simple for a cemetery without Grand View's history of legal troubles, she said.
The city's oldest cemetery has been the center of legal battles since October 2005, when state inspectors found the remains of about 4,000 people that were never buried or properly disposed of there.
A lawsuit was filed against the cemetery and its owners in November 2005.
It alleged that under their ownership, the cemetery mishandled the remains. The majority stakeholder, the late Marsha Lee Howard, was also accused of loaning herself $40,000 from Grand View's Endowment Care Fund, a trust created to maintain the cemetery.
