Opinion ID: 2548235
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiffs' Attack on Permit Conditions Imposed on Their Properties Under the Ordinance

Text: Plaintiffs' action, in our view, is in part one to determine the ... validity of conditions imposed on their permits and to void, or annul the decisions imposing those conditions. (§ 65009, subd. (c)(1)(E).) Plaintiffs allege that the County has violated its legal duties by imposing rent and occupancy conditions on second unit permits; that Travis unsuccessfully sought removal of the conditions to his permit at the administrative level and now seeks the same through judicial relief; and that the Sokolows, having unsuccessfully sought to have the Ordinance amended, seek judicial relief against the County's exceeding its lawful authority by imposing the permit conditions. They pray, inter alia, for orders requiring the County to cease imposing such conditions and to record an expungement of the rent and occupancy restrictions the Ordinance required them and other second unit owners to record against their deeds. To the extent it rests on such allegations and requests such relief, the action comes within section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(E). The action was brought within 90 days of final administrative action on Travis's permit; it thus is timely as to Travis's claim the conditions imposed on his permit are invalid. (See Hensler v. City of Glendale (1994) 8 Cal.4th 1, 22, 32 Cal.Rptr.2d 244, 876 P.2d 1043 ( Hensler ) [limitations period for challenge to application of land use regulation to specific property runs from the final adjudicatory administrative decision].) But the action was brought almost 11 months after the Sokolows' permit application was approved; it is thus untimely as to their claim of invalid permit conditions. Despite the plain language of section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(E), the County insists the subdivision is inapplicable to Travis's claims because Travis has challenged the permit conditions generally, as imposed pursuant to a preempted or unconstitutional ordinance, rather than challenging the application of the ordinance to a particular permit. The County urges us to hold that paragraph (B) of section 65009, subdivision (c)(1), rather than paragraph (E), applies to all Travis's claims because the petition presents only facial claims of invalidity, without alleging any disparate application or effect on his property compared to other second units subject to the Ordinance. We find the County's reasoning unpersuasive. True, plaintiffs' legal challenge to the Ordinance is properly characterized as facial in that it considers only the text of the measure itself, not its application to the particular circumstances of an individual. ( Tobe v. City of Santa Ana (1995) 9 Cal.4th 1069, 1084, 40 Cal.Rptr.2d 402, 892 P.2d 1145.) Yet plaintiffs object not only to the Ordinance's enactment and continued existence, but also to its application to their second dwelling unit permits. Plaintiffs' claim of unconstitutionality, for example, is not a facial challenge to the . . . ordinance predicated on a theory that the mere enactment of the ... ordinance worked a taking ( Hensler, supra, 8 Cal.4th at p. 24, 32 Cal.Rptr.2d 244, 876 P.2d 1043), but, rather, a claim that the County effected a taking by demanding invalid exactions as a condition of issuing them second unit permits. Plaintiffs' preemption arguments, to be sure, go solely to the Ordinance's facial validity, but their complaint, as we have seen, is aimed not only at the Ordinance's enactment or existence but also at the County's enforcement of the Ordinance against plaintiffs' own property. Section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(E), in setting a time limit for actions challenging permit conditions, does not purport to restrict the legal theories or claims that may be made in such an action, and we see no justification for reading such a substantive limitation into the clear procedural language of the statute. Subdivision (e) of section 65009 provides that after expiration of the limitations period, all persons are barred from any further action or proceeding. (Italics added.) A plaintiff, therefore, may not avoid the short 90-day limit of section 65009 by claiming that the permit or condition is void and thus subject to challenge at any time. ( Ching v. San Francisco Board of Permit Appeals (1998) 60 Cal.App.4th 888, 891-894, 70 Cal.Rptr.2d 700 [challenge to conditional use permit as null and void fell within Gov.Code, former § 65907, the predecessor to § 65009, subd. (c)(1)(E)]; Hawkins v. County of Marin (1976) 54 Cal.App.3d 586, 592-593, 126 Cal.Rptr. 754 [same].) By the same token, an action is not removed from the purview of section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(E) merely because the plaintiff claims the permit or condition was imposed under a facially unconstitutional or preempted law. The County relies on Hensler, supra, 8 Cal.4th at page 22, 32 Cal.Rptr.2d 244, 876 P.2d 1043, in which this court stated: If the challenge is to the facial validity of a land-use regulation, the statute of limitations runs from the date the statute becomes effective. Government Code section 65009 establishes a 120-day period of limitation for such actions. [3] But in Hensler we were not concerned with delineating the issues that could be raised in a timely challenge to permit conditions. The point of the cited passage was, rather, that an action in inverse condemnation based on an allegedly invalid subdivision ordinance, brought several years after the city had applied the ordinance to the plaintiff's property, was untimely, whether considered as an attack on the ordinance itself or on the city's application of the ordinance. ( Hensler, supra, at pp. 7-8, 21-22, 32 Cal. Rptr.2d 244, 876 P.2d 1043.) Indeed, elsewhere in the decision we explained that a claim of regulatory taking, arising from imposition of a development restriction, requires a showing that the ordinance, regulation, or administrative action is not lawful or constitutionally valid if no compensation is paid. ( Id. at p. 25, 32 Cal. Rptr.2d 244, 876 P.2d 1043, italics added.) Hensler thus does not stand for the proposition that a challenge to a permit or permit condition, timely under section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(E), is rendered untimely merely because the theory of challenge is the facial invalidity of the ordinance upon which the permit or condition is based. That the Ordinance could have been facially attacked in an appropriate action at an earlier time, before it was applied to Travis's property, does not make section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(E) inapplicable to Travis's claim for removal of invalid conditions. This is not a case in which the plaintiff complains of injury solely from a law's enactment. (See Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. v. City of La Habra (2001) 25 Cal.4th 809, 824, 107 Cal. Rptr.2d 369, 23 P.3d 601 [Here, in contrast, the City's allegedly illegal actions include not only the Ordinance's initial enactment, but also the City's continued collection ... of an unapproved tax].) Travis complains of injury arising from, and seeks relief from, not simply the Ordinance's enactment or continued presence in the County Code, but the County's imposition on his second unit permit of conditions required by the Ordinance. Having brought his action in a timely way after application of the Ordinance to him, Travis may raise in that action a facial attack on the Ordinance's validity. ( Id. at p. 822, 107 Cal.Rptr.2d 369, 23 P.3d 601 [plaintiffs' attacks on the validity of the tax ordinance itself are not barred merely because similar claims could have been made at earlier times as to earlier violations].) In the related context of local government development fees, the Court of Appeal has distinguished between a legislative decision adopting a generally applicable fee and an adjudicatory decision imposing the fee on a particular development. ( N.T. Hill Inc. v. City of Fresno (1999) 72 Cal.App.4th 977, 986, 85 Cal. Rptr.2d 562.) Adjudicatory fee decisions, the court held, are subject to the protest procedures and limitations period set forth in Government Code section 66020; legislative fee decisions are subject only to the limitations period in Government Code section 66022. Put slightly differently, section 66022 applies when the plaintiff's goal is a judicial finding that the legislative decision adopting the charge cannot be enforced in any circumstance against any existing or future development because of some procedural or substantive illegality in the decision and section 66020 applies when the plaintiff's goal is a judicial finding that the charge set by the legislative decision cannot be demanded or collected in whole or part with respect to the specific development. ( N.T. Hill Inc. v. City of Fresno, supra, at pp. 986-987, 85 Cal. Rptr.2d 562.) [4] Analogously, to the extent Travis seeks a finding that the Ordinance cannot be applied against him, and relief in the form of removal of the conditions on his permit, his challenge is to the County's adjudicatory decision imposing the conditions and comes within section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(E). [5] Utility Cost Management v. Indian Wells Valley Water Dist. (2001) 26 Cal.4th 1185, 114 Cal.Rptr.2d 459, 36 P.3d 2 does not suggest a different result. Without deciding whether the distinction drawn in N.T. Hill Inc. v. City of Fresno is correct, we there held the fee imposition decision at issue would in any case be deemed legislative rather than adjudicatory because the fee ordinance was expressly applicable to the plaintiff and calculation of the fees was a purely ministerial actassertedly performed by a computerbased on the formulas set forth in the fee legislation. ( Utility Cost Management v. Indian Wells Valley Water Dist., supra, at p. 1194, 114 Cal.Rptr.2d 459, 36 P.3d 2.) In the present case, the decision by the County's zoning officials to issue Travis a second unit permit subject to rent and occupancy conditions, while it may have been legally compelled by the Ordinance, required more than a purely mechanical or arithmetic process on their part. The County's construction of section 65009 would, in addition, tend to produce unjust and potentially unconstitutional results, which we do not believe the Legislature intended. If a preempted or unconstitutional zoning ordinance could not be challenged by a property owner in an action to prevent its enforcement within 90 days of its application (§ 65009, subd. (c)(1)(E)), but instead could be challenged only in an action to void or annul the ordinance within 90 days of its enactment ( id., subd. (c)(1)(B)), a property owner subjected to a regulatory taking through application of the ordinance against his or her property would be without remedy unless the owner had had the foresight to challenge the ordinance when it was enacted, possibly years or even decades before it was used against the property. Like the notice rule rejected in Palazzolo v. Rhode Island (2001) 533 U.S. 606, 626-627, 121 S.Ct. 2448, 150 L.Ed.2d 592 (the idea that a postenactment purchaser takes with notice of the legislation and therefore cannot claim it effects a taking), a construction of section 65009 barring any challenge to the validity of a zoning ordinance once 90 days have passed from its enactmenteven in the context of its application to particular propertywould allow the government, in effect, to put an expiration date on the Takings Clause. This ought not to be the rule. Future generations, too, have a right to challenge unreasonable limitations on the use and value of land. ( Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, supra, at p. 627, 121 S.Ct. 2448.) The Legislature intended section 65009 to provide certainty to local governments (§ 65009, subd. (a)(3)), but not, we think, at the expense of a fair and reasonable opportunity to challenge an invalid ordinance when it is enforced against one's property. [6] We conclude, therefore, that Travis's challenge to the imposition of conditions on his second unit permit was timely brought, though the Sokolows' was not. The remaining question is whether plaintiffs' other claims for reliefthat the County has, and is violating, a duty to repeal or amend the Ordinance or to cease enforcing itare timely. We examine now the limitations statutes assertedly applicable to those claims.