The First District Court of Appeal has argued that Humbolt County did not create a taking of property by requiring the owners of a mobile home underneath an airport flight path to provide an overflight easement in exchange for a permit to build a carport and porch that had been i

Reversing the decision of an Orange County Superior Court judge, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that rezoning residential property in Tustin to accommodate an assisted living facility is a legitimate use of spot zoning. "The creation of the new senior residentia

If the oral argument is any indication, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to rule against a landowner in Florida who filed a takings lawsuit against an Orlando-area water district - turning what appeared to be an easy victory for property rights advocates into a loss.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal has upheld the City of Newport Beach's environmental impact report for the Banning Ranch development, rejecting a challenge by a local conservancy which asserted piecemeal environmental review and the adequacy of the impacts of a park the city

In many situations, the settlement of a lawsuit is a flexible tool to resolve disagreements between parties and allow the participants to move on with their lives. A settlement with a public agency invokes slightly different considerations then a matter resolved exclusively throu

In case you missed the recent legal tremor, be advised that land-use lawyers are looking closely at a new appellate court ruling from Tuolomne County on the application of the California Environmental Quality Act to citizen initiatives. The new ruling is in direct conflict to a r

When deciding whether to award a public litigant its attorneys' fees against another public entity under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5, the trial court may only consider the public litigant's "pecuniary interests and the pecuniary interests of its constituents" in determ

California State University East Bay undertook a dual-purpose environmental impact report for its campus master plan and two construction projects, meant to enable the campus to grow from roughly 12,000 to 18,000 students in the next 30 years. The construction projects consisted

As California seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state's industries in order to implement provisions of California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Assembly Bill 32), entities and trade groups both inside and outside the state have looked to the "dormant" Comm

In Quail Lakes Owners Assn. v. Kozina, the Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District affirmed a trial court's decision to grant a verified petition by a homeowners' association for an order under Civil Code section 1356. The petition asked to modify the association's gover

The newly incorporated City of Goleta had the authority to reject a final subdivision map after the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors had approved the tentative map for property that was in unincorporated territory at the time, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission does not have to consider impacts of previously licensed Butte County dams on threatened Chinook salmon, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. >>read more