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| Beachwood lawyers rebut city arguments By Lewis Rutherfurd lewis@hmbreview.com Published/Last Modified on Thursday, January 31, 2008 2:21 PM PST Attorneys for developer Charles Keenan Thursday filed a response to a post-trial motion from Half Moon Bay that the city filed in answer to the $37 million Beachwood land-use judgment late last year. The city motion, filed on Jan. 4, contests aspects of U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling against Half Moon Bay. He ruled the city unlawfully took the property on the north end of town by virtue of faulty drainage work done on the property and the subsequent denial of building permits. A key element of the city’s filing was the question of whether Keenan should have known of wetlands on the property when his trustee, Joyce Yamagiwa, bought the land at a foreclosure sale in 1993 -making him liable for his own resulting difficulties. The city has claimed that Keenan is guilty of unjust enrichment in a case that could bring him more than $40 million in compensation for a $1million investment on his part. But Keenan’s legal team asserts in papers filed today that those claims are largely rehashed from previously rejected arguments -- and contradict previous city claims. “The city argues that Yamagiwa’s purchase of the note on Beachwood for $1 million in 1993 is somehow connected to the property’s fair market value in 2006. This is sophistry,” reads the 25-page rebuttal in part. A forced sale such as the one that took place in 1993 does not represent market value, the document claims. Keenan’s lawyer noticed the city’s own appraiser testified in trial that the undamaged value of Beachwood in 2006 was about $34 million. The court said the land would be worth $39 million had it not been turned into wetlands. The rebuttal rejects the city’s motion to mitigate damages and apply a doctrine of fairness to Walker’s ruling as essentially an attempt to claim that the statute of limitations for damages in the case should have already passed. Keenan’s lawyers contend that the land was not rendered officially damaged until the city definitively ruled that wetlands were present in 2000 -- and that no claim of “physical taking” could have been filed before then. Any previous conditions on the site that featured wetland characteristics, still fell short of a definition and were vigorously contested at various points by both the city and the plaintiff, the rebuttal says. Walker will now rule on the opposing motions. His opinion will begin the 30-day window in which a formal appeal can be filed. The city has retained the San Francisco firm Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe to pursue an appeal if Walker’s ruling is not favorable. Click here for pdf of the rebuttal. Click here for pdf of the original judgment. |