After a trial of nearly two months, the jurors in Ventura County Superior Court found on Tuesday that the La Conchita Ranch Co. did not build a sufficient drainage system for its land on a hilltop overlooking the community of La Conchita.

The landslide followed soaking winter storms, and attorneys for the plaintiffs had argued the ranch, which grows lemons and avocados, saturated its orchards and created a "perfect recipe" for a landslide.

The ranch's lawyers countered that the area is geologically unstable and has had at least six landslides, including a 1909 slide that killed four railroad workers.

The Jan. 10, 2005, slide destroyed 13 homes and damaged 23 others in the unincorporated town on California's central coast, 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

"I'm glad the ranch is being held accountable," said community leader Mike Bell, sometimes called the "mayor" of the unincorporated town. "They had every opportunity to prevent what happened to our town and hopefully now they're going to pay for it."

Attorneys for both sides declined to comment after Tuesday's findings, citing a gag order that continues until the damages phase of the trial is over. That part of the trial, which the judge has said could take more than a month, begins Monday.

The ranch will not be subject to punitive damages, because the jury ruled that its conduct was not "outrageous" or in "reckless disregard" to property or people.

It took Judge Vincent O'Neill more than an hour to read 50 pages of findings in the case, in which dozens of plaintiffs including property owners and relatives of victims sued the company for wrongful death, personal damage and property damage.

The complex jury verdict also found that some of the plaintiffs who owned property in the area were liable for injuries to other plaintiffs.

The jury exonerated ranch manager David Orr and Ventura County, saying they were not negligent.

Justice Joyce Kennard wrote that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state's law, which "imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations."

In the lawsuit that led to the ruling, Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside said that the doctors treated her with fertility drugs and instructed her how to inseminate herself at home but told her their beliefs prevented them from inseminating her. One of the doctors referred her to another fertility specialist without moral objections, and Benitez has since given birth to three children.

Nevertheless, Benitez in 2001 sued the Vista-based North Coast Women's Care Medical Group. She and her lawyers successfully argued that a state law prohibiting businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation applies to doctors.

The law was originally designed to prevent hotels, restaurants and other public services from refusing to serve patrons because of their race. The Legislature has since expanded it to cover characteristics such as age and sexual orientation.

During the penalty phase of Juan Alvarez's trial, jurors cried openly as survivors of the dead came forward to describe the anguish of their losses and the emptiness of their lives since the accident in 2005 robbed them of spouses, sisters, fathers and mothers.

Superior Court Judge William Pounders, who has presided over many high profile trials in a long career on the bench, admitted outside the jury's presence that he also had been affected by the survivors' testimony.

"I've never been so emotionally affected by evidence," said Pounders, who does not have the option to increase the penalty to death at the sentencing hearing Wednesday.

The prosecution described Alvarez as a remorseless, smirking defendant who didn't think of the case as a tragedy.

The defense painted the 29-year-old as a mentally disturbed man who was almost aborted by his mother, was shaped by a childhood of horrific abuse and became a methamphetamine addict. They said he drove his sport utility vehicle on the railroad tracks in a misguided attempt to get the attention of his estranged wife. They said he changed his mind at the last minute but it was too late to get the vehicle off the tracks.

Now, nearly 15 years later, Echols is hoping to convince the judge who oversaw his original case to grant him a new trial. His attorneys say DNA tests clear him and the two others in prison for the crime.

Attorneys for Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, known to supporters as the "West Memphis Three," were to appear Wednesday before Craighead County Circuit Judge David Burnett, along with the case's original prosecutor.

Together, the lawyers and judge will lay out a schedule for a three-week slate of hearings in September on DNA evidence and claims of juror misconduct in their 1994 trials over the murders of 8-year-olds Steven Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore.

Burnett has barred both prosecutors and defense lawyers from speaking with reporters about the case, saying he was tired of reading about it in the newspapers. It dominated newspapers and television sets throughout Arkansas and the nation after police found the three boys' water-soaked bodies in a drainage ditch a day after their May 5, 1993, disappearance from West Memphis.

The boys' hands were bound to their legs by shoelaces and their bodies showed signs of suffering severe beatings. One boy's body had been mutilated. A month passed and the community posted a $30,000 reward before police arrested the three teens. Misskelley told investigators how he watched Baldwin and Echols sexually assault and beat two of the boys as he ran down another trying to escape.

A separate jury gave Misskelley, who refused to testify against the other two, a life-plus-40-year sentence for the killings. Baldwin received a life sentence without parole after standing trial with Echols, who preened at times during the trial and quoted Shakespeare to reporters. Echols was sentenced to die.

Lawyers for former Hungarian soldier Charles Zentai said they will appeal the decision, handed down in Western Australia's Perth Magistrates Court. If it is upheld, Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus will make the final determination on whether Zentai should be extradited.

Zentai, an Australian citizen, is listed by the U.S.-based Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center among its 10 most wanted Nazis as having "participated in manhunts, persecution, and murder of Jews in Budapest in 1944."

Hungary accuses Zentai of torturing and killing 18-year-old Peter Balazs in a Budapest army barracks on Nov. 8, 1944, for failing to wear a star that would identify him as a Jew.

Zentai, who emigrated to Australia in 1950, has denied the allegations.