The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear its first California Environmental Quality Act case in three years.
The state's high court also agreed to review a significant brownfields case, and to let stand a controversial CEQA ruling involving water and local general plans.
The court accepted for review Friends of Sierra Madre v. City of Sierra Madre, No. S085088, in which the Second District Court of Appeal invalidated an election because the city violated CEQA. (See CP&DR Legal Digest, January 2000.) The court said the city's act of placing on the local ballot a measure to remove 29 properties from the city's Register of Historic Landmarks was a "project" under CEQA. Unlike a citizen's initiative, the council's discretionary action to place the city-sponsored measure on the ballot is subject to CEQA, the court ruled.
The city put the measure on the ballot specifically to avoid CEQA review, and argued in court that CEQA did not apply. The city also argued that CEQA did not authorize the court to throw out election results.
Four of seven state Supreme Court justices — Chief Justice Ronald George and Associate Justices Marvin Baxter, Ming Chin and Janice Brown — voted to hear the case. It will be the court's first CEQA case since it decided in August 1997 that de-listing a species under the California Endangered Species Act is not exempt from CEQA, but that CESA procedures provide a functional equivalent to CEQA. (See CP&DR Legal Digest, August 1997.)
The court decided not to hear a more far-reaching CEQA case, League to Save Sierra Lakes v. El Dorado County Water Agency, No. C027948 (see CP&DR Legal Digest, January 2000). In that case, the Third District Court of Appeal threw out an environmental impact report for a water project because the EIR was predicated on El Dorado County's draft, unadopted general plan. The court also ruled the proposed purchase of three reservoirs by an irrigation district was subject to CEQA review, the Federal Powers Act does not preempt CEQA, and the EIR inadequately described baseline conditions. Only Justice Baxter wanted to hear the case, which has drawn interest of CEQA practitioners and observers.
The brownfields case the court unanimously decided to accept is Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's of London v. Los Angeles County Superior Court, No. S084057, (see CP&DR Legal Digest, December 1999). In that case, a divided three-judge panel of the Second District Court of Appeal said an oil company's insurer had no responsibility to pay for state-mandated remediation of polluted industrial sites or pay administrative fines. The court said insurance companies had a responsibility in regards only to lawsuits in the most technical sense. In a dissent, Appellate Justice Richard Aldrich said the ruling would slow clean up of the environment.
A Nevada County landowner cannot prevent the public from using a dirt road across his property, as public access to the road was established prior to a 1972 state law that greatly limited prescriptive easements, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled.
The public acquired — under the manner outlined by State Supreme Court rulings — the right to walk, run, cycle and ride horses on a dirt road adjacent to a Nevada Irrigation District (NID) irrigation canal on property owned by Jon Blasius, t...
A city is not liable for damages sustained because it failed to record a notice that a property was in a known landslide zone, despite a city ordinance requiring such recordation, the California Supreme Court has ruled.
In a case watched closely by many California cities and counties, the state Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the City of Los Angeles was not liable when the 1994 Northridge earthquake caused a landslide that destroyed a house in Pacific Palisades.
Justices did not dispute landowne...
A vesting tentative parcel map approved in 1990 but never recorded as a final parcel map had expired by the time a developer tried to act on the map in 1996, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court held that under both the Subdivision Map Act and the Manhattan Beach Municipal Code, the map for a four-unit beachside condominium project was no longer valid.
The unanimous three-judge panel also found that project opponents properly exhausted their administrative remedies even thou...
In a recently published opinion, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed construction of a high school in Tucson, Arizona, despite contentions from environmentalists that the school would harm an endangered owl.
The case involved differing opinions by experts and the trial judge's exclusion of testimony by two experts called by environmentalists. The Ninth Circuit ruled that Federal District Judge Frank Zapata did not rule unreasonably, and the three-judge appellate panel upheld the dec...
Insurance companies might have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up the Stringfellow Acid Pits, a notorious toxic waste dump in Riverside County, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.
In a complex ruling that combines state water law with liability insurance coverage definitions, the court ruled that the State of California "owns" all of the groundwater under the surface of the state, but not within the traditional definition of property ownership. Thus, the ownersh...
Claims that Sacramento County violated the California Environmental Quality Act while approving a commercial development have been dismissed by the Third District Court of Appeal because the project opponent did not submit a written request for a hearing within 90 days of filing a lawsuit.
The attorney for opponent Forster-Gill, Inc., argued that a telephone call to the court clerk within the 90-day period was adequate, but the appellate court disagreed, ruling that the law "plainly contemplates a written request that can be, and is, filed with the court."
A state appellate court has upheld the California Coastal Commission's denial of a development permit for a small mixed-use project in Morro Bay.
The court rejected developer Dan Reddell's arguments that the commission violated his due process and equal protection rights, and that its decision was a regulatory taking of property. Instead, the Second District Court of Appeal ruled that substantial evidence supported the commission's finding that Reddell's project was inconsistent with Morro Bay's local coastal plan (LCP).
A state appellate court has thrown out an Inyo County general plan amendment that the county argued was nothing more than a clarification of a longstanding policy.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two, concluded that the amendment was more than a mere clarification and that the county should have completed an environmental impact report before approving the amendment.
A City of West Hollywood moratorium on new multi-family housing development has been declared invalid by the Second District Court of Appeal. The court ruled that the city had not made required findings for the moratorium.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has set back a plan to develop the country's largest solid waste landfill near Joshua Tree National Park. The court ruled that the environmental analysis for the project was inadequate and that the Bureau of Land Management undervalued land it would provide to the landfill developer.
A state appellate court has struck down a California Environmental Quality Act exemption for an air district rule permitting new power plants to offset emissions by paving roads. The court found that the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District did not have adequate evidence to support its finding that the rule could not have a negative impact on the environment.
A developer is not entitled to reimbursement or damages from a consultant hired by a local government to complete an environmental impact report, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled. Even when the consultant fails to complete an EIR in a timely manner, the consultant owes no contractual duty to the developer that paid for the consultant, the court concluded.
