Legal Digest

A county may extend the life of a tentative subdivision map that has expired if the subdivider filed for an extension before the map expired, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.

The fight over a gigantic addition to a house in Los Angeles's Pacific Palisades area has resulted in an appellate court decision revoking three building permits and the certificate of occupancy for the structure. The order to revoke permits, originally issued by the trial court, came because the city let the property owner build 14 feet closer to the street than permitted by the Municipal Code.

An airport land use compatibility plan that discourages housing development on hundreds of thousands of acres is a "project" that requires a review of potential environmental impacts, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.

An appellate court has thrown out a decision by a City of Los Angeles planning commission because of the activities of a planning commissioner prior to a public hearing.

A lawsuit challenging approval of the 6,000-acre, 22,500-unit Sunrise Douglas community plan and a related specific plan in Rancho Cordova has been tossed out by the Third District Court of Appeal.

In the latest setback for a proposed water project in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a state appellate court has thrown out water permits and an environmental impact report approved by the State Water Resources Control Board.

The state Supreme Court has accepted for review an unusual Subdivision Map Act case from the City of Goleta.

An appellate court has overturned separate environmental impact reports and project approvals for two Bakersfield shopping centers with Wal-Mart supercenters as anchors.

The long-running legal fight between a hotel and San Francisco has finally reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court agreed in December to review the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' most recent decision in San Remo Hotel v. San Francisco.

A state law that mandates affordable housing development for projects within the coastal zone does not apply if a housing project that straddles the coastal zone boundary places no houses or other private facilities within the coastal zone, the California Supreme Court has ruled.

A state appellate court has upheld the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board's comprehensive regulations regarding municipal storm drainage discharges.