In state Supreme Court action, the court declined to review a landfill EIR, and, in an unrelated case, the court said it will not decide a San Francisco hotel conversion case that had already been briefed.
In the landfill case, a Fourth District Court of Appeals decision to uphold an environmental impact report for the giant Eagle Mountain landfill in Riverside County will stand. Only two of the seven justices, Joyce Kennard and Ming Chin, voted to review the decision in National Parks & Conservation Association v. Kaiser Steel Resources, 71 Cal.App.4th 1341 (1999).
The appellate court overturned the decision of San Diego County Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell, who said the EIR for the 2,200-acre landfill inadequately addressed impacts on the desert tortoise and on visitors to nearby Joshua Tree National Park. (See CP&DR Legal Digest, June 1999.) Although the Fourth District agreed with McConnell on the inadequacy of an earlier EIR for the same project, National Parks & Conservation Assn. v. County of Riverside, 42 Cal.App.4th 1505 (1996), the Fourth District this time said the study was acceptable.
The project would turn a former Kaiser iron-ore mine into a landfill capable of accepting 20,000 tons of trash a day for a century. Project opponents are now trying to block a needed Bureau of Land Management land swap with the landfill developer.
In the hotel conversion case, the state's high court decided it will not review a case in which a hotel owner contended San Francisco's hotel conversion law was an illegal taking of property.
In late July, the seven justices decided it was a mistake to grant review in Lambert v. CCSF, S065446. The Supreme Court action means San Francisco wins the case, but the First District Court of Appeals opinion remains unpublished.
The hotel owners, represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, argued that the city's rejection of an application to convert a residential hotel into a tourist hotel was spurred by the owners refusal to pay a $600,000 mitigation fee. Such a condition of approval should be subject to heightened scrutiny, the PLF argued. The city said it denied the application because it wanted to preserve affordable housing provided by the Cornell Hotel, which is subject to the city's law preventing such conversions.
Two of three justices on the First District, Division One, said that the mitigation fee issue was irrelevant and that the city had denied the landowner of nothing. (See CP&DR Legal Digest, October 1997.) The Supreme Court granted review in January 1998 and the case was fully briefed earlier this year. Even Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed an amicus brief on the city's side.
A confident San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Andrew W. Schwartz expressed disappointment for the court not to review the case because he wanted to add a Supreme Court's opinion to a list of earlier defenses of the hotel conversion law in state appellate court and at the federal Ninth Circuit. He said the hotel conversion law has been "more litigated than any other local ordinance in the history of the world."
The Fourth District Court of Appeals has denied the City of Anaheim's petition for rehearing in a case in which the court ordered Anaheim to approve permits for an adult cabaret.
The court did modify its opinion in Badi Abraham Gammoh v. City of Anaheim, 1999 Daily Journal D.A.R. 6685, (CP&DR Legal Digest August 1999), but the modifications did not alter the judgement against the city.
The court had ruled that Anaheim's actions in denying permits for Gammoh's Funtease theater did not pass ...
In an unpublished opinion, the Fourth District Court of Appeals rejected a lawsuit over the November 1998 ballot measure approving financing for San Diego's new baseball stadium.
Ballpark opponents, led by former City Councilman Bruce Henderson, argued that the city should have prepared an EIR ahead of time, that the measure required a two-thirds vote, and that Proposition C should have specified that the city would incur $225 million of new debt. The unanimous three-judge panel rejected al...
The operator of a golf course on leased property was not entitled to compensation when a public agency condemned part of the property to accommodate a trolley line, the Fourth District Court of Appeals has ruled. The unanimous three-judge panel said the San Diego Metropolitan Transit Development Board (MTDB) was correct when it compensated the owner of the real estate, not the lessee.
In renewing federal hydropower licenses, The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission does not have to consider the hypothetical question of what the environmental conditions would be if the dams in question were never built, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. The Ninth Circuit also ruled that while FERC must consider environmental concerns raised by the Interior and Commerce Departments, the commission has final discretion to address those concerns.
But in writing the unanimous ...
Members of a redevelopment agency's project area committee who own property within the project area do not have a conflict of interest that prevents their participation, according to an attorney general's opinion.
The opinion, written at the request of Los Angeles City Attorney James Hahn, says that statutes and case law regarding project area committees makes clear that an exception is warranted to the normal conflict of interest rules.
Government Code ยง 1090 says government representati...
A streetlighting assessment district created prior to Proposition 218 is exempt from the tax-limiting initiative, the Fourth District Court of Appeals has decided.
The court held that the City of Riverside's Street Light Assessment District is exempt because it provides revenue to operate streets, which was a specific exemption in the 1996 initiative. The July ruling was a blow to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and Paul Gann's Citizens Committee, two statewide organizations that ba...
An elementary school proposed for agricultural land is not subject to a Ventura County initiative intended to preserve farmland and open space, according to an attorney general's opinion.
A school district board of trustees, by a two-thirds vote, may exempt itself from local land use regulations, according to the opinion prepared by Deputy Attorney General Gregory Gonot. He quoted extensively from City of Santa Clara v. Santa Clara Unified School District (1971) 22 CalApp.3d 152, in which t...
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.
