Woody's Group v. City of Newport Beach
Annotate this CaseThe City Council of Newport Beach violated at least two basic principles of fairness in overturning a permit application approved by the city's planning commission. In this case Councilmember Mike Henn, having already voiced his "strong[]" opposition to Woody's Group, Inc.'s application, was allowed to appeal the approval of Woody's application to the Commission on which he sat, where he did his best to convince his colleagues to vote with him against the application. Furthermore, the Council entertained the appeal even though he didn't follow the procedures laid out in the code, and then retroactively tried to justify that violation by claiming the city had a custom of extending such lenity to council members. Two cases requiring municipal governments to play fair were found by the Court of Appeal to be directly on point and required reversal of the case here. Reading those two cases together, the Court concluded the trial court erred in not granting Woody's request for an administrative writ of mandate restoring the original planning commission's grant of its application.
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