Summit Media LLC v. City of L.A.

• Decision Date: 08 September 2015
• Docket Number: B255050
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: SUMMIT MEDIA LLC, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, Defendant and Respondent; CBS Outdoor LLC et al., Real Parties in Interest and Respondents.

240 Cal.App.4th 171

192 Cal.Rptr.3d 662

SUMMIT MEDIA LLC, Plaintiff and Appellant

v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, Defendant and Respondent;CBS Outdoor LLC et al., Real Parties in Interest and Respondents.

B255050

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 8, California.

Filed September 8, 2015

Perkins Coie, Timothy L. Alger, Julie E. Schwartz, Palo Alto, and Sunita Bali, San Francisco, for Plaintiff and Appellant.

Michael N. Feuer, City Attorney, Terry Kaufmann Macias, Assistant City Attorney, and Tayo A. Popoola, Deputy City Attorney, for Defendant and Respondent.

Kendall Brill & Klieger, Laura W. Brill and Richard M. Simon, Los Angeles, for Real Party in Interest and Respondent Outfront Media Inc.

Latham & Watkins, James L. Arnone and Benjamin J. Hanelin, Los Angeles, for Real Party in Interest and Respondent Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc.

GRIMES, J.

SUMMARY

This is the second appeal in a dispute among several outdoor advertising companies and the City of Los Angeles over certain billboards with digital displays. In the first appeal, we affirmed the trial court's finding that a settlement agreement between two of the companies and the City, allowing the companies to digitize many of their existing billboards, was illegal and void, because a municipal ordinance expressly prohibited “ ‘alterations or enlargements' ” of such signs. (Summit Media LLC v. City of Los Angeles (2012) 211 Cal.App.4th 921, 924, 150 Cal.Rptr.3d 574 (Summit Media I ).) We also concluded, contrary to the trial court's judgment, that it was necessary to revoke all digital conversion permits granted under the illegal settlement agreement. (Ibid. ) We directed the trial court “to amend its order so that it invalidates all digital conversion permits issued by the city to real parties under the settlement agreement.” (Id. at pp. 941–942, 150 Cal.Rptr.3d 574.)

The trial court, after hearings, promptly amended its order, declaring the digital conversion permits invalid. The trial court's order also identified the signs at issue, and ordered the immediate discontinuation of digital use of the signs. In compliance with the trial court's order (the April 2013 order), the parties turned off the digital displays, and the signs went dark.

Plaintiff Summit Media—the company that successfully challenged the illegal settlement agreement—then filed a motion seeking, among other things, an order that “[a]ll digital displays and sign structures” identified in the April 2013 order “shall be demolished and removed....” Real parties Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc. and Outfront Media Inc. (formerly CBS Outdoor), on the other hand, wished to resume the use of their sign structures to display static advertising, as they had before the illegal digital conversion. Plaintiff also sought attorney fees under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5, the “private attorney general” attorney fee statute (section 1021.5 ), for the legal work that successfully voided the illegal agreement and rid the city of most digital billboards.

After extensive litigation, the trial court denied plaintiff's motion to demolish the signs and denied the attorney fee motion. Plaintiff timely appealed.

We affirm the trial court's orders.

FACTS

1. The Background

We will not repeat here the facts surrounding the initial disputes that led to our decision in Summit Media I. The interested reader may find the details in that decision. For our purposes here, this brief summary should suffice.

Plaintiff and real parties are all engaged in the lucrative outdoor advertising business in the city, owning and maintaining numerous “off-site signs”—billboards in locations other than at a property owner's business. In April 2002, the city established a permanent, general ban on new off-site signs (with exceptions that are irrelevant to this appeal), and a ban on “alterations or enlargements of legally existing off-site signs” (the 2002 sign ban). This sign ban, along with other ordinances calling for inspections and inspection fees for off-site signs, generated a maelstrom of lawsuits in state and federal courts filed by real parties, plaintiff, and others.

Eventually, in September 2006, the city and real parties entered into an agreement settling their disputes. The settlement agreement exempted real parties from the 2002 sign ban, the inspection program, and numerous other zoning and building laws regulating off-site signs. The agreement required the city to issue new permits allowing real parties to modernize a large number of their off-site signs, despite the ban on that kind of modification, and whether or not the signs violated present or prospective building and zoning ordinances. The settlement agreement also exempted real parties from the usual procedures for obtaining permits. Real parties immediately undertook significant modifications of their off-site signs, otherwise prohibited by the 2002 sign ban, including the conversion of existing static, wood and vinyl signs to digital displays. (We describe the scope of the modifications more fully post. )

In August 2008, plaintiff filed this lawsuit, challenging the settlement agreement as illegal and void. While that litigation was pending, the city enacted an ordinance, effective in August 2009, explicitly banning off-site signs with digital displays. (The ordinance's “whereas” clauses indicated that real parties' digital conversions were “causing unanticipated negative impacts including negative impacts on residential neighborhoods....”)

As noted above, the trial court granted plaintiff's motion for a writ of mandate, ordering the city to set aside and cease implementing the settlement agreement. Real parties appealed, proffering numerous bases for error in voiding the settlement agreement. Plaintiff cross-appealed, contending the trial court should also have revoked the digital conversion permits the city issued in violation of the 2002 sign ban. Plaintiff argued: “The de minimis burden that might be shouldered by [real parties] if they must apply for new permits under the same laws that apply to everyone, and/or remove the digital displays, is far outweighed by public policy requiring fair and consistent application of the zoning laws. No one asked the Superior Court or this Court to order that the digital displays be destroyed. This is not a matter of demolition of a structure or the loss of a property right. Rather, [real parties] must go through the process that everyone else must use to obtain a sign permit.” Plaintiff concluded by asking this court to “enter judgment invalidating all digital conversion permits issued by the City to [real parties] under the Settlement Agreement.”

We agreed with plaintiff, concluding the settlement agreement was illegal and void, and there was no legal basis for the trial court's refusal to revoke digital conversion permits issued under an illegal agreement and in violation of unambiguous municipal ordinances. We ordered the trial court to amend its order to invalidate all digital conversion permits issued under the settlement agreement. (Summit Media I, supra, 211 Cal.App.4th at p. 942, 150 Cal.Rptr.3d 574.)

2. Proceedings After the Remittitur in Summit Media I

Our remittitur issued on March 14, 2013, and the parties immediately began filing proposed orders and other papers in the trial court.

a. The April 2013 order

After hearings, the trial court amended its November 4, 2009 order granting the writ of mandate. The April 2013 order stated that the digital conversion permits issued by the city to real parties under the settlement agreement, identified in the order, “are hereby declared invalid and the digital use of the digital signs shall be discontinued.” The April 2013 order identified, by permit number and address, 84 Clear Channel Outdoor digital permits and 15 CBS Outdoor digital permits that were declared invalid. The order further stated: “This Order does not consider nor enter judgment regarding any rights concerning non-digital signs or non-digital aspects of digital sign permits. The parties retain all of their rights as to those matters.” The court stated it retained jurisdiction, including over any motion for attorney fees or costs.

b. Proceedings after the April 2013 order

Real parties discontinued digital use of their signs, in compliance with the court's April 2013 order.

A few weeks later, plaintiff filed a motion for orders “for removal and demolition of digital sign faces and structures that are subject to the Court's Order of April 16, 2013” (the demolition motion). Plaintiff's demolition motion also asked for orders “invalidating all other permits or ‘re-permits' ” issued to real parties pursuant to the settlement agreement and “further orders effectuating this Court's writ of mandate and in conformance with” this court's Summit Media I decision.

On the same day, real party Outfront Media notified the city that it intended to continue to use its permitted sign structures for off-site signage “and proposes to install vinyl copy over the non-operative digital faces on or after May 17th.” The city sought an order preserving the status quo, and on May 9, 2013, the court ordered real parties “to retain the status quo and not install any advertising on their digital structures” pending a hearing on plaintiff's demolition motion.

c. The work performed in converting the signs to digital displays

The parties conducted a great deal of discovery in anticipation of the hearings on the demolition motion, including on the scope of the work that had occurred in connection with the conversion of real parties' signs to digital displays. There is no significant disagreement on what was done to the signs when they were modernized with digital displays.

As plaintiff describes the work, real parties removed the pre-existing static faces from the steel superstructures. They placed LED units on the superstructures using a crane, typically attaching them to an existing steel framework mounted on the sign structure's load-bearing horizontal girder or...