4 results for month: 07/2023
West Oakland rally reiterates community opposition to coal terminal
A Community Rally organized by Rev. Ken Chambers of the Interfaith Council of Alameda County was held on Saturday July 22, in the parking lot of the West Side Missionary Baptist Church where Rev. Chambers is pastor. Residents, community organizers, and many stalwarts of the long fight to keep coal out of Oakland turned out for a free lunch, music, and new banners created by the incomparable David Solnit.
Three current Oakland City Council members spoke -- Carroll Fife, Janani Ramachandran, and Dan Kalb -- but were careful not to address the question of coal due to the ongoing lawsuit between developers and the City (see Courtroom Diary for the ...
Trial Begins in Oakland Coal Case
After four and a half years of preliminary skirmishes, lawyers today delivered opening statements in developer Phil Tagami’s legal battle to avoid eviction from the West Gateway, a 19-acre piece of West Oakland waterfront owned by the City of Oakland. Phil Tagami and associates plotted to build and operate an export terminal that would bring coal by rail from Utah for shipment overseas.
The trial will hinge on the question of who broke the lease Tagami signed with the City in February 2016.
The City of Oakland terminated Tagami’s lease in November 2018 after the developer failed to meet the August 2018 deadline to begin construction of a ...
Pretrial Hearing: scheduling and pretrial issues
All signs are that the trial in OBOT/OGRE v City of Oakland will begin on Monday morning, July 10, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. in Department 514, Hayward Hall of Justice, in Hayward, CA. A pre-trial hearing on the afternoon of July 6 dealt with scheduling and key pretrial issues on which the parties could not agree going into trial.
The public is welcome to attend the trial in Judge Noel Wise’s courtroom, but the court announced that there would be no audio stream (i.e., there will be no remote listening option).
Most importantly, Judge Wise adopted the City’s proposal to bifurcate the trial into a liability stage and a remedy stage. During the ...
No Jury Trial in Oakland Coal Dispute: Judge Wise Will Decide
At a pre-trial conference on June 28, 2023, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Noël Wise approved an agreement between would-be coal terminal developers and the City of Oakland to waive their respective rights to a jury trial in the ongoing battle over the City’s termination of the developers’ lease in 2018. At a non-jury or “bench” trial, the judge hears the evidence and decides all questions of law and fact. If all goes smoothly, the parties will make their opening statements on the morning of July 10th in Judge Wise’s Hayward, California courtroom.
The developers will be asking the judge to award them $148 million of damages and to ...