CP&DR

City Must Pay for Temporary Takings: L.A.'s Delay in Issuing Permit Earns Landowner $1.2 Million

Feb 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

Delays by the City of Los Angeles in issuing a permit to demolish a burned-out hotel amounted to a temporary taking, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The unanimous three-judge appellate panel upheld a trial court's ruling that awarded the landowner $1.2 million, plus interest, for the inverse condemnation. The court upheld the trial court's monetary award after concluding that the city's delay in issuing the demolition permit was not part of the normal development review process, and...

Water Plan Must Match General Plan: Court Also Expands State Say Over FERC-Licensed Dams

Jan 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 01 Jan 2000

An appellate court has thrown out an environmental impact report for a 17,000-acre-foot water project in El Dorado County because the EIR was predicated on an unadopted, draft general plan. In the same far-reaching opinion, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled that the purchase of three reservoirs by an irrigation district was not categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act because the district planned to provide the water for consumption, which would have been a new use. Th...

Lack of Environmental Study Dooms Sierra Madre Election

Jan 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 01 Jan 2000

The Second District Court of Appeal has thrown out the results of an election in the City of Sierra Madre because the city violated the California Environmental Quality Act. In a December 1999 decision, the court invalidated an April 1998 election in which voters approved a city-sponsored measure that removed 29 properties from the city's Register of Historic Landmarks. City officials put the issue on the ballot as a way of avoiding a study of the impacts of delisting the properties. But the court sai...

Rent Control: Mobile Home Rent Control Ordinance Ruled Constitutional

Jan 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 01 Jan 2000

The City of Montclair's ordinance controlling rents in mobile home parks is constitutional, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court rejected mobile home park owners' argument that the ordinance was a regulatory taking without compensation. Citing the California Supreme Court's decision in Santa Monica Beach, Ltd. v. Superior Court, (1999) 19 Cal.4th 952, the appellate court ruled that "a rent control ordinance is a regulatory taking if it is an arbitrary regulation of property rights....

Inverse Condemnation: Court Rules Telephone Tower Neither A Taking Nor Nuisance

Jan 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 01 Jan 2000

Construction of a 130-foot-tall cellular telephone transmission tower does not constitute inverse condemnation of a neighboring property from which residents can see the tower, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled. In a case from Butte County, the court also ruled that the tower did not constitute a nuisance because it did not harm neighbors' use of their property. "[W]hile we have sympathy for plaintiffs' plight, not all plights give rise to legal rights," Justice Daniel Kolkey wrote for th...

Taxes: State Supreme Court Will Hear Proposition 62 Case

Jan 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 01 Jan 2000

The state Supreme Court has granted a petition for review of a case involving a city's utility user's tax. Six of seven justices voted to review Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association v. City of La Habra, 1999 Daily Journal D.A.R. 9003, in which the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that the statute of limitations had elapsed for challenging the tax. (See CP&DR Legal Digest, October 1999.) Lawyers on either side of the case had expected the state's high court would take the case because the decision ...

Ruling Could Slow Brownfield Reuse

Dec 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 12 Dec 1999

In a decision that could have implications for the cleanup of polluted industrial sites, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled that an oil company's insurer has no responsibility to pay for state-mandated remediation. In a 2-1 ruling, the court held that the insurer's promise to defend a "suit" did not force the insurer to defend an administrative proceeding. Furthermore, the court said, the insurer must pay only court-ordered damages, and not fines coerced by an administr...

Clean Air Act: Environmentalists Who Filed Lawsuit Lose Appeal For Fees

Dec 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 12 Dec 1999

An environmental group that sued a company over alleged violations of the Clean Air Act has been denied attorneys' fees by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The unanimous three-judge panel — which included retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White, sitting by assignment — said that in cases where the government eventually does take action, such as this one, a private party is not entitled to receive its court costs. In November 1995, The Montana Coalition for Health, Environmen...

Pending Litigation: Developer Attacks Referendum Over Subdivision Agreement

Dec 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 12 Dec 1999

Less than a week after voters decided nearly 20 growth-related ballot measures, an attorney for a developer who lost an election last January made its case to the Second District Court of Appeal. The lawyer for Costa Mesa-based Messenger Development argued that a referendum over a 3,200-home development in the City of Moorpark was illegal. During a January special election, Moorpark voters overturned their City Council's approval of Hidden Creek Ranch, a subdivision proposed inside Moorpark'...

Long Beach Argument to Cut Base-Year Property Values Fails

Nov 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 11 Nov 1999

The Fourth District Court of Appeal has sided with the County of Los Angeles in its tug of war with the City of Long Beach over the setting of base year property values in a redevelopment area. The court concluded that the tax assessment role in place when Long Beach approved the redevelopment plan contained the base year property values. The court rejected Long Beach's argument that the base year values should reflect the lowering of some property values by the county's own Assessment Appeals Board. ...

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