CP&DR

Anti-SLAPP Law Grows: ‘Issue of Public Significance' Receives Broad Reading

Mar 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 03 Mar 1999

In a split decision, the California Supreme Court has once again expanded the scope of the anti-SLAPP law. This time, the court concluded that an allegation of racism in small-claims court and a complaint to the federal government does constitute the type of "issue of public significance" described in the law. In overturning a ruling by the First District Court of Appeal, the five-member Supreme Court majority rejected the argument that a nonprofit organization's tenant counseling activities wer...

Lack of Engineering Details Does Not Invalidate Study

Mar 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 03 Mar 1999

The lack of precise engineering plans in an environmental impact report's project description of a proposed gravel mine expansion did not violate the California Environmental Quality Act, the Fifth District Court of Appeal has ruled. "CEQA requires an EIR to reflect a good faith effort at full disclosure; it does not mandate perfection, nor does it require an analysis to be exhaustive," Justice James F. Thaxter wrote in the unanimous decision for the three-judge panel. When considering an ...

No Taking in Rent Control: Deeply Split, Cal Supremes Uphold Santa Monica Law

Feb 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

In a case with potentially widespread significance, a sharply divided California Supreme Court has upheld the Santa Monica rent control law against an inverse condemnation claim. In concluding that rent control cases are subject to a different level of judicial scrutiny than cases involving exactions and other economic aspects of land-use regulation, the Supreme Court has created the possibility that different types of inverse condemnation cases will be treated differently in court. Espec...

Adult Business Regulation: Newport Beach Revocation of Permit is Upheld

Feb 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

Ruling on wide-ranging issues in three separate cases filed by the same business, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has upheld a Newport Beach adult business ordinance as constitutional and concluded that the city did not violate the business's constitutional rights by denying some permits and revoking others. As the court stated in its decision, the case is about "appropriate ways in which to distinguish a theater from a restaurant - something with which the general public seems to have ...

Initiatives: Defect Means City Can't Simply Adopt Initiative

Feb 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

The First District Court of Appeal has overturned the Hayward City Council's decision to adopt a proposed ballot initiative reaffirming open-space designations within the city and subjecting future open-space zone changes to a vote. The court concluded that because the signature-gathering effort was legally flawed, the council did not have the right to adopt the initiative as a city ordinance. The decision - a reversal of the trial judge's ruling - is a victory for Mervyn's, the retail chain, which ha...

Costal Act: ‘Calvo EXckusion' Doesn't Apply in Malibu Coastal Dispute

Feb 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

A Malibu property owner can't rely on the so-called "Calvo exclusion" - which exempts single-family homes from Coastal Commission jurisdiction - because the property owner had previously agreed to submit to the commission's control, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. "Appellant has taken inconsistent positions in this litigation, first waiving the right to further litigate the Calvo exclusion and agreeing to obey any Commission order regarding restoration of the property, and later asserti...

Landowner Loses Again: No Taking in Coastal Dispute, Apppellate Court Rules

Jan 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 01 Jan 1999

The Second District Court of Appeal has reaffirmed its decision to overturn a $2 million takings judgment against the Coastal Commission - even after reconsidering the case in light of a California Supreme Court ruling in another coastal case. However, the property owners' lawyers appear determined to fight on to the California Supreme Court on the very issue that caused the remand in the first place. Lawyer Thomas Banks said his client, Peggy Ann Buckley, plans to appeal the case to the Calif...

No EIR Needed on Plan for Landfill, Court Rules

Jan 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 01 Jan 1999

San Diego County's integrated waste management plan did not require preparation of an environmental impact report even though the plan called for the creation of new landfills and identified 10 possible sites for those landfills, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. "There is no substantial evidence in the administrative record to support a fair argument that the county's adoption of the summary plan and siting element may have a significant environmental impact, and thus the county did not ...

Supreme Court Takes Landslide Case

Jan 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 01 Jan 1999

The California Supreme Court has agreed to review an appellate court decision that ruled the City of Los Angeles should not be held liable for landslide-related damage to a property in the Pacific Palisades even though it violated municipal code requirements. In Haggis v. City of Los Angeles, Supreme Court Docket No. S074364, property owner Paul Haggis argued that his house was damaged by a landslide triggered in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and later condemned and demolished by the city. After t...

AG: No Conflict in Infrastructure Deal

Jan 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 01 Jan 1999

Requiring a landowner to provide an excess amount of infrastructure capacity - and reimbursing that landowner later with other county funds - does not fall under the state's conflict of interest laws if a county supervisor is one of the landowners, according to a new opinion from the state attorney general's office. According to the attorney general, such a requirement - permitted under the state's Subdivision Map Act - is not a contract between the developer and the landowners and therefore does not ...

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