Here's the Brief in Opposition filed recently in City of Los Angeles v. Lavan, No 12-1073 (cert. petition filed Feb. 28, 2013), the case in which the Ninth Circuit in a 2-1 panel decision held that the city could not presume that property owned by homeless people in the Skid Row area was abandoned, and enjoined the city from seizing and destroying it when the owner was "momentarily away" from it.
Hawaii connection: The petiton pointed out a federal lawsuit filed in December 2012 alleging that the City and County of Honolulu violated the due process rights of "De-Occupy Honolulu" members (those folks who are still camping on the sidewalk next to Thomas Square across Beretania from the Honolulu Museum of Art). As noted here, we didn't think that Lavan would have a direct impact on Honolulu's "stored property" ordinance, or the more recently-adopted ordinance to deal with personal property in public spaces, but maybe we were wrong. We'll see.
The cert petition detailed the conditions in the Skid Row area that purportedly resulted from the injunction, and it made it sound pretty awful. Lavan's BIO naturally does not focus on that, but rephrases the Question Presented:
Did the district court err when it issued a preliminary injunction preventing the City of Los Angeles from immediately destroying the momentarily unattended property of homeless persons without adequate notice or any post-deprivation hearing opportunity in the absence of adequate evidence that doing so is required to maintain any proffered government interest and in the absence of evidence that such property was abandoned, where state law recognizes a property interest in all tangible personal property and imposes a mandatory obligation to preserve unattended property?
The International Municipal Lawyers Association filed an amicus brief supporting the petition, which is posted here. The case is on the Court's calendar for the June 20, 2013 conference.
Stay tuned, tomorrow we will post the City's Reply Brief.
Brief in Opposition, City of Los Angeles v. Lavan, No. 12-1073 (May 24, 2013)
