Black v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes

Landowners challenged a 1978 building moratorium based on the resurgence of an ancient landslide, seeking to build a residence in an area of Rancho Palos Verdes. The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court's judgment for the city, holding that Monks v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes, (2008) 167 Cal.App.4th 263 (Monks II), was not dispositive in this case, and neither the landowners' arguments nor the court's review of the moratorium in the city's municipal code revealed a facial constitutional infirmity. The court rejected landowners' contention that Monks II absolved them of the responsibility for exhausting administrative remedies under the doctrine of stare decisis; exhaustion of administrative remedies would not be futile; and the expense of applying for an exclusion from the city's building moratorium did not excuse the landowners from that administrative process. View "Black v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes" on Justia Law