Justia California Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The City of San Diego (City) certified an environmental impact report (EIR) for the “Serra Mesa Community Plan [SMCP] Amendment Roadway Connection Project” (Project) and approved an amendment to the SMCP and the City’s General Plan to reflect the proposed roadway. Save Civita Because Sudberry Won’t (“Save Civita”) filed a combined petition for writ of mandate and complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief (Petition/Complaint) against the City, challenging the City’s certification of the EIR and approval of the Project. Save Civita contended that the City violated the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”), the Planning and Zoning Law, and the public’s due-process and fair-hearing rights. The trial court denied the Petition/Complaint in its entirety and entered a judgment in favor of the City. On appeal, Save Civita raised four claims related to the City’s certification of the EIR for the Project: (1) the City violated CEQA Guidelines section 15088.5, subdivision (g) in failing to summarize revisions made in the Project’s recirculated draft EIR (RE-DEIR); (2) the Project’s final EIR (FEIR) was deficient because it failed to adequately analyze, as an alternative to the Project, a proposal to amend the MVCP to remove the planned road from that community plan; (3) the FEIR is deficient because it failed to adequately analyze the Project’s traffic impacts; and (4) the FEIR failed to adequately discuss the Project’s inconsistency with the General Plan’s goal of creating pedestrian-friendly communities. In addition to its EIR / CEQA claims, Save Civita maintains that the Project will have a deleterious effect on the pedestrian-friendly Civita community and that the City therefore violated the Planning and Zoning law in concluding that the Project is consistent with the City’s General Plan. Finally, Save Civita maintains that the City acted in a quasi-adjudicatory capacity in certifying the FEIR and approving the Project and that a City Council member violated the public’s procedural due process rights by improperly advocating for the Project prior to its approval. Finding no reversible error, the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court's judgment in favor of the City in its entirety. View "Save Civita Because Sudberry Won't v. City of San Diego" on Justia Law

This appeal arose out of the tragic rape and murder of Rachel Russell, perpetrated by her grandson, Sidney DeAvila. DeAvila suffered from severe mental illness, and at the time of the murder he was on parole. Russell’s son, plaintiff Steven Russell, brought an action against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (Department), alleging the Department’s parole agents had a special relationship with Russell, and they failed to warn her of DeAvila’s dangerous propensities. A jury agreed, and ultimately awarded plaintiff $4.5 million in noneconomic damages, which the trial court reduced to $2.7 million. The Department appealed, arguing it had no duty to warn Russell of DeAvila’s dangerous propensities and, even if it did have a duty to warn, it was immune from that liability. Plaintiff claimed on cross-appeal that the trial court erred in reducing the judgment and imposing sanctions against trial counsel. The Court of Appeal was "compelled to agree" with the Department, that because the facts presented were not sufficient to establish that there was a special relationship between the agents and Russell, no duty to warn arose. Accordingly, judgment was reversed. View "Russell v. Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation" on Justia Law

Mission Peak filed suit against the State Water Resources Control Board, alleging that it violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by granting a small domestic use registration to Christopher and Teresa George without first conducting an environmental review.The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court's decision sustaining the board's demurrer without leave to amend, concluding that the registration was exempt from CEQA as a ministerial act, rather than a discretionary act. In this case, Mission Peak points to no statute that grants the board authority to place conditions on the Georges' registration to lessen its environmental effects; the only conditions the board may impose are general conditions applicable to all registrations; registration is automatically deemed complete, and the registrant obtains the right to take and use the specified amount of water, when the board receives a substantially compliant registration form along with the registration fee; the board determines whether a registration is compliant essentially by applying a checklist of fixed criteria; and the registration is effective as of the date of the form and remains so until and unless the water right is forfeited, abandoned, or revoked. View "Mission Peak Conservancy v. State Water Resources Control Board" on Justia Law

The issue this case presented for the Court of Appeal's review centered on the application of rules calculated to reduce the administrative burden posed by public records requests for electronic records made by petitioner Dean Getz to real party in interest the County of El Dorado (the County), under the California Public Records Act (the Act). Concerned about the management of a homeowners association of which he was a member, Getz sought records regarding the County’s contacts with the homeowners association and a development company. Because they were electronic records, the County was able to quickly locate e-mails potentially responsive to the request. But believing he had not obtained all the information available, Getz expanded the scope of the request to include all e-mails from January 2013 to August 1, 2018, between four e-mail domain names associated with the development company and its representatives and any department of the County. The County complained about the volume of e-mails responsive to the request, and speculated many of the documents were not likely to relate to the conduct of official business, and thus would not be “public” records, and indeed might fall within various exemptions from disclosure. The trial court agreed with the County that the request was overbroad and unduly burdensome. The Court of Appeal concluded it could reasonably be assumed that records in the custody of a public agency were public records; a claim to the contrary had to be made by the agency and be supported by substantial evidence. Further, the burden to assert and establish exemption from disclosure was on the agency, "which would be well advised to segregate privileged documents from others." The petition was granted in part and respondent court was ordered to vacate that portion of its order denying Getz’s request under the Act for production of e-mails to and from four enumerated e-mail domains and order the County to produce the text of e-mails and any attachments on the County’s index of 42,852 responsive e-mails. View "Getz v. Super. Ct." on Justia Law

A tax-sharing agreement between the County of San Benito and the City of Hollister requires the city to pay the county a fixed fee (Additional Amount) per residential unit constructed on land annexed into the city from the county during the period covered by that agreement. Plaintiff’s predecessor entered into an annexation agreement with the city, agreeing to comply with “all applicable provisions” of that tax sharing agreement. When the plaintiff purchased the annexed land and sought to develop it into subdivisions, the city informed the plaintiff that it was liable for the Additional Amount fees. Plaintiff paid the fees under protest, then sued, seeking a declaration of its rights and duties under various written instruments.The court of appeal affirmed a defense judgment. Plaintiff is contractually liable for the Additional Amount by the terms of the annexation agreement. Any challenge to the calculation of the Additional Amount is beyond the scope of a declaratory relief action and time-barred. The court rejected the plaintiff’s arguments that neither the annexation agreement nor the tax sharing agreement requires the plaintiff to pay the Additional Amount and that the fees violate the Mitigation Fee Act and federal constitutional constraints on development fees as monetary exactions. View "BMC Promise Way, LLC v. County of San Benito" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs challenged a surcharge that Long Beach imposes on its water and sewer customers by embedding the surcharge in the rates the Water Department charges for service. The surcharge funds are transferred from the Water Department to the city’s general fund, to be used for unrestricted general revenue purposes. The surcharge was approved by a majority of the city’s voters under California Constitution article XIII C. The plaintiffs argued that notwithstanding majority voter approval, the surcharge violates article XIII D, which prohibits a local agency from assessing a fee or charge “upon any parcel of property or upon any person as an incident of property ownership” unless the fee or charge satisfies enumerated requirements the city acknowledges were not met.The trial court found the surcharge unconstitutional and invalid. The court of appeal affirmed the judgment and an award of attorney fees. Because the surcharge qualifies as a “levy other than an ad valorem tax, a special tax, or an assessment, imposed by an agency upon a parcel or upon a person as an incident of property ownership, including a user fee or charge for a property related service,” it satisfies the definition of “fee” or “charge” in article XIII D and must comply with article XIII D, section 6(b)’s requirements regardless of voter approval. View "Lejins v. City of Long Beach" on Justia Law

Chavez-Cortez filed a representative cause of action under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA, Lab. Code 2698), seeking civil penalties for wage-and-hour violations. The suit was dismissed for failure to satisfy the requirement of notice to the Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA). Relying on precedent (Khan), the defendants argued that the notice provided did not inform the LWDA “of the claims of any other alleged similarly situated but unidentified individuals” or that Chavez-Cortez “intended to pursue this matter on behalf of these unnamed individuals.”The court of appeal reversed. The notice at issue in Khan differs substantially from plaintiffs’ notice; here, the plaintiffs’ notice alerted the agency and defendants to ongoing Labor Code violations that were not by nature isolated or unique to plaintiffs. The notice was not deficient for failing to reference other aggrieved employees implicated by the representative action. Plaintiffs’ letter provided fair notice to the agency of representative claims for meal breaks, rest breaks, and overtime violations. View "Santos v. El Guapos Tacos, LLC" on Justia Law

Appellants John Tos et al. (Tos parties) appealed a trial court's a judgment that section 2704.78 of the Safe, Reliable High-Speed Train Bond Act for the 21st Century (Bond Act) (Sts. & Hy. Code, section 2704 et seq.) did not violate the state debt provision of the California Constitution set forth in article XVI, section 1. Subdivision (d) of section 2704.08 of the Bond Act, approved by the voters in 2008 as Proposition 1A, required an independent financial report indicating, among other things, that each corridor or segment of a corridor of the high-speed train system, if completed according to a “detailed funding plan,” would be “suitable and ready for high-speed train operation.” The Tos parties contended the meaning of “suitable and ready for high-speed train operation” set forth in section 2704.78 (a), constituted an implied partial repeal of the Bond Act in violation of section 1 of article XVI of the California Constitution. To this, the Court of Appeal disagreed: "The 'single object or work' of the Bond Act was (1) the initial planning and construction of a high-speed train system under (2) a 'mandatory multistep process to ensure the financial viability of the project,' which we described in California High- Speed Rail Authority v. Superior Court (2014) 228 Cal.App.4th 676 (Rail Authority). ... The multistep planning and review process in section 2704.08, subdivision (d), remained intact." The judgment was thus, affirmed. View "Tos, et al. v. California" on Justia Law

When a city delegates the administration of ambulance services to the surrounding county, which then assumes control, the city may not later attempt to resume administration of those services. In this case, the Court of Appeal concluded that the trial court properly applied this holding when it denied a motion for a preliminary injunction sought by the City to prohibit the County and Ventura County Emergency Medical Services Agency (VCEMSA) from contracting for ambulance services within City limits.The court concluded that there was no error in the trial court's determination that the City lacks the authority to contract for its own ambulance services under the EMS Act. In this case, the City contends it meets the criteria for Health and Safety Code section 1797.201 grandfathering because it contracted for ambulance services on June 1, 1980, as one of the signatories to the joint powers agreement (JPA). However, on that date the JPA empowered the County, not the City, to contract for and administer ambulance services. Therefore, this fact is fatal to the City's contention. Furthermore, even if the court assumed that the provision of ambulance services is a police power, the exercise of that power is subject to constitutional constraints. The court explained that the City ceased contracting for, providing, and administering ambulance services when it signed the JPA in 1971. Regardless of whether it withdraws from the JPA, it may not now resume providing those services absent the County's consent. View "City of Oxnard v. County of Ventura" on Justia Law

The issue this case presented centered on the aftermath of an Indian tribal casino’s unsuccessful suit in tribal court against appellant James Acres following a contract dispute. After dismissal of the tribal case, Acres filed his own suit in state court against two officials of the casino, the casino’s attorneys, a tribal court judge, the clerk of the tribal court, and various other individuals and entities. He alleged, among other things, that the parties he sued (collectively, respondents) wrongfully conspired to file the lawsuit against him in tribal court. He then sought monetary relief from respondents as redress for this alleged conduct. The trial court, however, found Acres’s claims against all respondents barred by sovereign immunity and, as to the tribal judge and several others, also barred by judicial or quasi-judicial immunity. On appeal, the Court of Appeal reversed in part. Because Acres’s suit, if successful, would bind only the individual respondents, and not the tribe or its casino, the Court found those respondents were not entitled to sovereign immunity. But, as to those respondents who asserted personal immunity from suit (e.g., judicial immunity), the Court agreed those respondents, with one exception, were immune from suit. View "Acres v. Marston" on Justia Law