Latest 2 Cases: Golden Door Properties, LLC v. Super. Ct. (Civil Procedure), Rutgard v. City of Los Angeles (Real Estate & Property Law)

Dear House Judiciary Committee: In Questioning William Barr, Employ the Ethics Complaint That 27 Distinguished DC Lawyers Filed Wednesday

FREDERICK BARON, DENNIS AFTERGUT, AUSTIN SARAT

Frederick Baron, former associate deputy attorney general and director of the Executive Office for National Security in the Department of Justice, Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, and Austin Sarat, Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College, call upon the House Judiciary Committee to carefully read the ethics complaint by 27 distinguished DC lawyers against William Barr before questioning him today, July 28, 2020.

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Golden Door Properties, LLC v. Super. Ct.

Docket: D076605(Fourth Appellate District)

Opinion Date: July 30, 2020

Judge: Judith McConnell

Areas of Law: Civil Procedure, Environmental Law, Government & Administrative Law, Real Estate & Property Law, Zoning, Planning & Land Use

Under California Public Resources Code section 21167.6, documents "shall" be in the record in a CEQA challenge to an environmental impact report (EIR). The County of San Diego (County), as lead agency for the Newland Sierra project, no longer had "all" such correspondence, nor all "internal agency communications" related to the project. If those communications were by e-mail and not flagged as "official records," the County's computers automatically deleted them after 60 days. When project opponents propounded discovery to obtain copies of the destroyed e-mails and related documents to prepare the record of proceedings, the County refused to comply. After referring the discovery disputes to a referee, the superior court adopted the referee's recommendations to deny the motions to compel. The referee concluded that although section 21167.6 specified the contents of the record of proceedings, that statute did not require that such writings be retained. In effect, the referee interpreted section 21167.6 to provide that e-mails encompassed within that statute were mandated parts of the record - unless the County destroyed them first. The Court of Appeal disagreed with that interpretation, "[a] thorough record is fundamental to meaningful judicial review." The Court held the County should not have destroyed such e-mails, even under its own policies. The referee's erroneous interpretation of section 21167.6 was central to the appeals before the Court of Appeal. The Court issued a writ of mandate to direct the superior court to vacate its orders denying the motions to compel, and after receiving input from the parties, reconsider those motions.

Rutgard v. City of Los Angeles

Docket: B297655(Second Appellate District)

Opinion Date: July 30, 2020

Judge: Brian M. Hoffstadt

Areas of Law: Real Estate & Property Law, Zoning, Planning & Land Use

A public entity desiring to retain condemned property under Code of Civil Procedure section 1245.245 has to "adopt" its initial and reauthorization resolutions within 10 years of each other; section 1245.245 uses the date of "final adoption;" the local law fixes when a resolution is "finally adopted;" and a resolution is "finally adopted" once the city council has enacted the resolution and it has either been (1) approved by the mayor, or (2) vetoed by the mayor, but overridden by the city council. In this case, plaintiff filed a petition for writ of mandate alleging that the city had a present legal duty to offer him a right of first refusal to purchase the property at issue. The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court's grant of the petition, holding that the city finally adopted its initial and reauthorization resolutions 19 days past the 10-year deadline, and thus section 1245.245 requires the city to offer to sell the property back to its original owner.