There is a lawsuit in San Diego County that is as old as “I Love Lucy.” It was filed the same year a disc jockey coined the term “rock ‘n’ roll,” a gallon of gasoline cost 27 cents, and turn signals were still optional in cars.

And it is still being waged in San Diego federal court today.

In 1951, the U.S. government sued thousands of landowners in and around Fallbrook in a move to secure Camp Pendleton’s water rights. It is the oldest, ongoing civil case in the county.

Commonly referred to as “the Fallbrook case,” the 65-year-old lawsuit has encompassed so much more than the North County hamlet. Homeowners, businesses, school districts, churches, ranches, farms, water districts, Native American tribes and family trusts — spanning a swath of San Diego and Riverside counties — have all been entangled in a classic Wild West showdown over who gets the water in the Santa Margarita River.

Early reports put the number of defendants at 14,000, but it appears to have been closer to 7,000 at the lawsuit’s height — still a massively complicated, headache-inducing venture.

Among the more famous defendants was legendary Hollywood director Frank Capra, who lived on his Red Mountain Ranch near Fallbrook at the time and produced a short propaganda film that depicted a tyrannical government squashing the will of the common folk in its quest for water. Earle Stanley Gardner, creator of the Perry Mason character in his detective book series, lived on a Temecula ranch and represented himself when the case went to trial.

The media in those days often depicted the case through a cast of heroes and villains, and it became a cause celebre on Capitol Hill.

Today, the official court record is comprised of a staggering 5,500 docket entries, and still growing.

How has a case lasted this long, and will it ever be over?

It’s a question Charles Binder — who for the past 10 years has served as the appointed watermaster in the case, making sure the court’s orders are being carried out — gets asked all the time. His answer is less than satisfactory to those who prefer simple, finite endings.

“For us folks specializing in water rights cases ... this is normal to us,” Binder said.

“Essentially, the case will never go away. There will always be an element of continuing jurisdiction the court will have.”

Water flows over rocks on the Santa Margarita River. The Santa Margarita River, an intermittent, 39-mile river that winds its way through parts of Riverside and San Diego counties and Camp Pendleton, has been the subject of the longest running legal battle in San Diego County. — John Gibbins

The beginnings

The Santa Margarita River has been the lifeblood for the far northern reaches of the county for centuries, from Native American tribes who hunted and fished along its banks to early settlers to modern-day water districts. The 27-mile river begins near Temecula and for a short distance is called the Temecula River. It then flows southwest into San Diego County, at times a small creek, with areas of white water gushing over boulders, in other parts dry as it seeps into a large underground basin. It empties into the Pacific Ocean north of Oceanside, in Camp Pendleton.

It is the county’s last free-flowing river, and one of the last in Southern California.

Oldest case timeline 1940: Rancho Santa Margarita y Flores and the Vail Ranch enter into an agreement dividing the waters of the Santa Margarita River 66/33. 1941: The military buys the Rancho Santa Margarita lands, turning it into Camp Pendleton. 1951: The government decides not to go through with a plan to build a dam and share river water with Fallbrook. Instead it files a lawsuit against landholders and the Fallbrook Public Utility District asking the court to establish its claim to the river. 1952: Fallbrook resident and Hollywood director Frank Capra produces “The Fallbrook Story” film. The national interest grows. 1952: Federal government wins first trial. 1958: A second trial begins after a court of appeals overturns first verdict. 1963: Second trial ends with final decree granting both Pendleton, Fallbrook and others water rights. 1968: Two-dam project agreed upon by Pendleton and Fallbrook, but project never gains enough steam to be completed in ensuing years and runs into roadblocks. 2016: Pendleton and Fallbrook are working toward shared-use project, while Native American tribes are in settlement talks with other landowners to quantify their rights to the river.

While the present-day lawsuit over its waters was filed in 1951, you might say the case actually dates back much earlier, when the region’s two largest ranches became embroiled in a bitter legal battle over usage rights. In 1926, Richard O’Neill, owner of the huge Rancho Santa Margarita y Flores, sued rival rancher Walter Vail, who owned a cattle operation upstream.

The lawsuit crescendoed in a three-year-long trial — at the time said to be the longest court trial on record in the United States.

The case ended up settling in 1940, in an order written by San Diego Superior Court Judge Gordon Thompson. (His son, U.S. District Court Judge Gordon Thompson Jr., would oversee a portion of the current case six decades later.) The agreement called for Rancho Santa Margarita to get 66 percent of the water, and Vail 33 percent. Four other smaller landholders got miniscule amounts.

The following year, the U.S. military bought the Rancho Santa Margarita lands, turning it into Camp Pendleton and the Fallbrook ammunition depot. And with the land purchase comes the water rights, right?

The World War II years were ripe with rain. But as the decade was ending and drought set in, the river became more important to the base. Fallbrook and the surrounding areas were also drawing more and more people.

In 1949, the military and the Fallbrook Public Utility District, which was using a combination of water from the Santa Margarita, the San Luis Rey River and groundwater wells, reached a tentative deal on the construction of a dam that would serve the region’s water needs.

But a Justice Department lawyer specializing in western water rights, William H. Veeder, didn’t like the looks of the agreement, Robert C. Miller wrote in his 1987 thesis on the case for California State University, Hayward. Veeder questioned why the government would give up any of its two-thirds claim to the river spelled out in the 1940 ranch settlement.

His supervisors agreed and the federal government filed the lawsuit on Jan. 25, 1951, asking to establish once and for all its title to the southern portion of the river.

The federal government has been fighting Fallbook residents over the rights to the Santa Margarita River's waters for six decades. — John Gibbins

Backlash

The government’s lawsuit stressed that an adequate water supply was “required for the Nation’s defense,” as the military was engaged in a new war in Korea.

The original suit was filed against about 50 landowners, a few water districts and 25 unnamed “John Does.”

Many of the landowners answered the lawsuit with brief, handwritten letters.

“I have never used any water on my property or taken any from it. So can not see how I could be any part of this,” Dorothy Veazy wrote on petite stationary. “I own the 40 acres and hope to sometime have a house built there, and would then need water.”

Mary Medran explained in cursive handwriting that the only water she and her husband used was for domestic use, not farming, and the water came from “a spring on the side of the hill.”

“As you know, water is low everywhere. We have less water than last year. But it isn’t noticed much because we don’t use that much water,” she wrote.

The government continued to add landowners, and the number of defendants swelled to the thousands by the end of the year.

A Los Angeles Times clipping from the scrapbook Otis Heald's parents kept. He plans to donate it to the Fallbrook Historical Society. San Diego Union-Tribune

The animosity among landholders in the area grew, and the story caught the attention of Los Angeles Times reporter Ed Ainsworth, who wrote a series of crusading articles about the dispute and became an outspoken advocate for the folks in Fallbrook.

The story hit the national spotlight in 1952 with “The Fallbrook Story,” a 25-minute film written by Ainsworth and produced by Charles M. Peters and Capra — who was named in the lawsuit and also sat on the Fallbrook water district board — although he is uncredited in the movie.

The movie opens with an introduction by legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille, and includes images of an iron fist twisting water pipes and scenes of bucolic Fallbrook. “This film tells the simple story of plain people fighting for their rights under the American Constitution. It sustains your faith in representative government. This story shows the supremacy of the people and their elected representatives. It demonstrates that truth and tenacity can overthrow tyranny.”

Cecil B. De Mille, left, works on his introduction to “The Fallbrook Story” film. Charles M. Peters, a producer, is in center and Walter Bach is on camera. This photo was published in the June 23, 1952, Los Angeles Times. Paul Calvert

Then comes a close-up of an iron fist twisting water pipes.

“Greed and tyranny wielding the mailed fist of oppression have moved against the people of the soil,” the narrator says. The movie ends with the farmers and townspeople celebrating a victory over Big Government, and these closing thoughts:

The film closes on these thoughts: “Greater than the Fallbrook case, greater than the wrongs inflicted on the farmers of Santa Margarita, the fundamental question: Which way of life is to prevail in the United States? Shall it be the Evil One? Are Americans to be ruled in fear of the mailed fist of tyranny. ... Or is Fallbrook to lead with its courage, its humanity and its strength in a mighty rebirth of the real American way, the way of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln?”

Otis Heald, whose father O.P. Heald was a one-time manager and board member of the Fallbrook water district, made a brief appearance in the film as a child, as did many of the townspeople. He was also there when five congressmen traveled to Fallbrook in 1951 for a days-long public hearing at the local school gym.

A congressional hearing in a Fallbrook school gym in 1951 brought out numerous landowners being sued by the U.S. government over rights to the Santa Margarita River. In an old newspaper photo, government lawyer William H. Veeder, in eyeglasses in the center, speaks to the crowd. — John Gibbins

The fear that government wanted to take everyone’s water away was palpable back then, Heald remembered.

“It definitely brought the people of Fallbrook together into a cohesive group, although Fallbrook was pretty small,” Heald, 76, recalled.

It was at that public hearing that Rep. Clair Engle, a northern California Democrat, declared the lawsuit was not only remarkable for its size but for its absurdity, asking, according to newspaper accounts, “Why would reasonable men undertake such a proceeding?”

In 1952, the first trial was held, with a Los Angeles federal judge quickly ruling that all the surplus water in the river was accounted for in the 1940 agreement, giving victory to the government. But that verdict was overturned on appeal, and a second trial was ordered.

Despite the Fallbrookians gaining some backing from Congress, as well as multiple attempts to settle the suit with a dam project, the Navy decided to press on with the case.

The Navy’s participation in the lawsuit was even investigated by a Senate subcommittee helmed by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, known for his reckless Cold War accusations, on grounds that there was a previous order prohibiting the use of Navy funds to prosecute the case. Nothing much came of it.

Then, in 1954, Congress passed a law approving a $22 million dam project at the De Luz Creek, giving Pendleton 60 percent of the water and the Fallbrook water district 40 percent. But the water district was not happy. The new law did not put an end to the lawsuit, leaving it to the court to determine the government’s water rights. Water was not going to come quickly.

Trial

As the parties prepared for a nonjury trial in 1958, the court took depositions from small landowners in an abandoned schoolhouse near Fallbrook, so they wouldn’t have to travel all the way to downtown San Diego. The judge used a cardboard box as his bench. By this point, there were about 6,000 defendants named, including Native American tribes.

The government budged and agreed to release small landowners from the suit who were using water only for domestic purposes, not for irrigation. The testimony from the landowners also revealed that many were using water from percolating sources not connected to the river.

The face of the government in the case was Veeder, the special assistant to the attorney general who originally disagreed with the 1948 dam idea and likely pushed the case to a lawsuit. To many, his was the face of a villain. He was known as being prickly, hard to work with and often earned the ire of the judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge James M. Carter. (The new San Diego federal courthouse now bears Carter’s name.)

In one 1957 settlement hearing, according to a San Diego Union article, Veeder exploded: “At virtual pistol point Fallbrook is going after us to get some water. We don’t intend to relinquish any water. Why should we? We don’t intend to be intimidated by Fallbrook.”

One Union reporter described Veeder as a small man physically who “fought like a tiger failing to yield ground as decision after decision went against him.”

Part of the government’s testimony painted Camp Pendleton’s water situation as so dire that there was concern the base might be forced to close if the court opposed its water rights.

A highlight of the trial came when Gardner, the Perry Mason author who was also a lawyer himself, represented himself in the case. He put his ranch manager on the stand, and was the subject of a sometimes icy cross-examination by Veeder. Gardner was also said to be a personal friend of the judge.

In May 1963, after 216 days of trial with 2,300 exhibits, the verdict was in. The judge issued his final decree, which included 145 judgments he’d issued throughout the span of the case. There were victories and losses on both sides, but the landowners were deemed the general winners as their water rights were spelled out.

The judge had ruled that the 1940 judgment concerning the two ranches was invalid, in part because it did not take into account all the other water users in the watershed. Carter also ruled that the federal government must play by state rules and apply for a permit for surplus water use, and that the government had wrongly exported water from the watershed to portions of the base determined to be outside the watershed.

Fallbrook’s state permit for a dam project requested years ago was also ruled to be valid.

The government appealed and won on two major points — the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the judge had wrongly invalidated the 1940 judgment, and it also reversed the ruling on the exportation of water outside the watershed.

The decree would otherwise stand, and it still largely governs the case today.

Not over

In 1968, an agreement was finally hammered out between Pendleton and the water district that would divide the water 60/40, with the military getting the bigger share. The Santa Margarita Project called for a dam at the De Luz Creek on Pendleton and another in Fallbrook.

Sensing opportunity, Fallbrook’s civic leaders and developers began advertising new lakefront property that the dam and recreational reservoir would create.

But as was obvious by now, nothing comes easy in this case.

The project lagged, for lack of funding and urgency, and there were new faces in leadership. Environmental interests were also growing at this time, and the Clean Water and Endangered Species acts focused attention on the impacts a dam would have on Southern California’s last uncontrolled river.

There was concern about beach erosion problems at the river’s mouth. The river was also home to half the world’s population of the least Bell’s vireo, a small songbird.

Then there was Veeder. He’d since moved to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and was now fighting — again pugnaciously — on behalf of the tribes in the area.

“I’ll not approve anything that gives Fallbrook any Santa Margarita River water belonging to the Pechanga Indians,” he told a Union reporter in 1971.

While the 1963 decree set out who had a right to what, it did not quantify those rights. The fight was not — and is still not — over.

Upstream, the Cauhilla Band of Indians and Ramona Band of Cahuilla Indians filed motions in 2007 asking the court to quantify their rights to the river, saying the river’s surface and groundwaters are the tribes’ sole water supply. Some 2,000 neighboring landholders were notified that their water rights were now in jeopardy. The parties are in settlement negotiations.

The Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians has also asked for its rights to be quantified and is involved in ongoing settlement talks with the Rancho California Water District and federal government. A senate bill introduced in Congress proposes to settle the dispute, giving the tribe up to 4,994 acre-feet of water per year and working out a shared use of a groundwater basin.

Kyber Courchesne, a part-time San Diego resident, is one of the many upstream still tied up in litigation. The land in question is a vacant lot in Lake Riverside Estates in Aguanga, his only inheritance from his parents, he told the plaintiffs in a 2008 letter after being served with the lawsuit.

“Literally, the only thing on the property are native plants,” he wrote. “There is no access to any watershed, aquifer, or the like. I am sure I am not the only person you have inconvenienced who have never used any of the resources you are fighting about.”

Courchesne said in an interview that he doesn’t have the funds to hire an attorney, and filings from the case continue to get mailed to his home, although he hasn’t followed the proceedings closely over the years.

“Water is becoming a really valuable commodity, and as I’m thinking about it more, this is a big deal,” he said, fearing the dispute has depreciated the lot’s value. “There’s probably real money on the table.”

As for the Fallbrook/Pendleton portion of the case, a shared-use project is closer than ever to being finalized.

Even though the judge upheld Fallbrook’s right to secure a state permit for a dam in the 1960s, the water district hasn’t had the infrastructure or funding in place to obtain the water since a 1969 flood destroyed the district’s diversion works.

The new $94 million Conjunctive-Use Project involves capturing surface water during storms and storing the surplus in an aquifer under Camp Pendleton. Some of the water would then be pumped back to the Fallbrook water district when needed.

Water from the project would account for 30 percent of the district’s water supply, according to Fallbrook Public Utility District spokeswoman Noelle Denke. The river would supplement the water that for years has been imported from various sources, including the San Diego County Water Authority and the Colorado River.

The project “allows both parties to exercise their long held water rights,” John Simpson, director of Camp Pendleton’s Office of Water Resources, said in a statement. He said the river remains critical to base operations.

Fallbrook hopes to be able to begin construction of the pipeline and treatment plant in about two years, with completion in three to five years.

This is the resolution that took almost six decades to reach.

Even then, as watermaster Binder said, the case will likely never really be over. The court will retain jurisdiction over the Santa Margarita River in perpetuity as new disputes arise and need to be heard.

This western water rights case will likely outlive us all.