Ah, the speed of the interwebs: we were all set to write something up about the California Court of Appeal’s recent opinion in Black v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes, No. B285135 (Sep. 6, 2018), when our friend and colleague Bryan Wenter beat us to it.
His post, “Court Rejects Residents’ Takings Lawsuits for Failure to Exhaust Administrative Remedies” pretty much tells the story. This same court a decade earlier concluded the City’s earlier version of a development moratorium was a Lucas taking. As Bryan writes,
Based on their interpretation of Monks II [that 2008 decision noted above], none of the landowners even filed an application for an exclusion from the moratorium. Instead, the landowners argued that Monks II absolved them of the need to exhaust administrative remedies or, alternatively, that exhausting administrative remedies would be futile.
Because the City might allow development if the owners here asked for it (hey, you never know!), the court concluded that their claim was not ripe.
Read Bryan’s post for the complete story and analysis.
Update: another colleague who regularly blogs about takings issues, Brad Kuhn, has also written up his analysis of Monks: “Another Regulatory Takings Case Gets Lost in the Procedural Maze” at Nossaman’s California Eminent Domain Report blog. Check it out.
Black v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes, No. B285135 (Cal. App. Sep. 6, 2018)