Cotter v. Schellinger Bros.
In Schellinger Brothers v. City of Sebastopol (2009) 179 Cal.App.4th 1245 (Schellinger I), this court first encountered the controversy surrounding a proposed commercial development that had become ensnared in a bureaucratic and politically charged morass that saw the certification of an environmental impact report (EIR) stymied for five years. The frustrated developer sued the municipality for a writ of administrative mandate to halt the seemingly endless proceedings under the California Environmental Quality Act (Pub. Resources Code, § 21000 et seq. (CEQA)). We held that none of the developer’s statutory arguments could “be used to halt the decisionmaking process specified by CEQA that is still ongoing.†(Schellinger I, supra, at p. 1250.) We specifically rejected Schellinger’s central contention that one provision of CEQA—Public Resources Code section 21151.1—imposed a “mandatory, nonwaivable jurisdictional deadline†of one year for approval of an EIR. (Id. at pp. 1259‑1261.)
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