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Appeals judges deliberate upon anti-oil lawsuit
A three-judge appeals court panel this week began deliberating over a lawsuit by Hermosa Beach Stop Oil and two other environmental groups trying to block a 30-year oil drilling project planned for what is now the city’s maintenance yard at Sixth Street and Valley Drive.
The state appeals court in Los Angeles heard arguments on Tuesday by lawyers for Heal the Bay, Santa Monica Baykeeper and the Hermosa group, and attorneys for Macpherson Oil Company of Santa Monica.
The California attorney general threw its weight behind the lawsuit in late October, siding with the environmental groups.
Rosamond Fog of Stop Oil said she was “reasonably optimistic” after listening to the arguments and to the judges as they questioned the attorneys.
The environmental groups are appealing a lower court ruling allowing the drilling project to go ahead despite voters’ approval of an anti-oil drilling ballot initiative, Measure E, in 1995. Judge Kurt Lewin determined that Measure E cannot block the drilling project because the city council approved a contract with Macpherson three years earlier, in 1992.
Attorneys for Macpherson argued successfully that under the U.S. Constitution, a vote of the public cannot cancel an otherwise valid private contract.
After the environmental groups appealed, the attorney general’s office filed a brief in agreement with Stop Oil, contending that despite the contract, the city maintains a “police power” to protect the environment and safety of its residents.
Deputy Attorney General Tara L. Mueller, who prepared the brief, was present in court on Tuesday, Fogg said.
The drilling project is being fought on a second major legal front as well. The same judge in March 1999 ruled that the city council acted illegally when it suspended the project in 1998, after a report by Aspen Bercha Environmental Group concluded that the project would pose a substantial health and safety risk to the surrounding neighborhood.
The judge ruled that the council could have taken “less drastic measures” to mitigate any risk.
City officials have been discussing a possible appeal.
In that decision, the judge also threw out a $100 million claim by Macpherson, ruling that the city council was not guilty of breaching the oil company’s contract in its 1998 action.
The oil company prevailed in two previous court battles, one over zoning requirements and the other centering on an environmental impact report for the project. ER