IRVINE : City Won’t Pay Legal Fees of Group It Sued

The city will not pay the legal fees for a citizens group that is battling a City Council lawsuit over a petition filed to stop the Irvine Co.’s most recently approved residential community.

On the advice of the city attorney, the Irvine council decided that offering financial support to a private citizens group might be an illegal use of public funds and voted 4 to 0 Tuesday not to pay the legal costs for Irvine Citizens Against Overdevelopment. Councilman William A. (Art) Bloomer was absent.

In December, the group filed a petition with enough signatures to challenge the council’s approval of the Irvine Co.’s 2,885-home Northwood 5 community, planned for construction on an orange grove just north of the city imits. The petition asked the council to either overturn its November approval of the project or place the matter before voters, as a state law outlines.

Instead, the council voted in January to sue the group and its leaders. Although a provision of state law allows city residents to challenge certain council actions by collecting signatures from 10% of the city’s registered voters, Irvine argued in its Superior Court lawsuit that the council’s development decision is exempt from that law.

Marc Goldstone, a slow-growth advocate who often appears at City Council meetings wearing a sweat shirt reading “Save a Tree, Cut Down a Developer,” asked the council last month to help pay the legal fees for his group. Hiring an attorney to fight the city’s lawsuit will cost $30,000 to $50,000, Goldstone said this week.

The group can’t afford the cost and hasn’t been able to find an attorney who will take the case on a contingency basis, he said.

“The Irvine Co. is going to hire the best attorneys available, and the city will use (its contract firm) Rutan & Tucker, a very good law firm,” Goldstone said. “Unless we can present a good legal argument (in court), we can’t win. The deck of cards is stacked against us.”

The lawsuit asks the court to invalidate the group’s petition and let the development proceed. Goldstone, as one of the leaders of the petition drive against Northwood 5, is named as a defendant in the suit, which also names the Irvine Co. as an interested party.