When City Hall filed a lawsuit against West Los Angeles College on Friday afternoon in their environment-tinged dispute over West’s pending construction program, “it was to preserve our legal position,” not serve as a comment on the state of negotiations, City Councilman Andy Weissman, an attorney, said this morning. “If we had not filed by Friday, we would not have been able to file at all because we would have been barred (by statute).”
Effectively, the spectre of the lawsuit looms over the comatose negotiations like a buzzing helicopter hovering a couple of hundred feet above the ground.
West has not yet been served with the papers. Because the suit is directly linked to the California Environmental Quality Act, said Dep. City Atty. Heather Baker, the plaintiff has 10 business days to serve them, meaning by the end of next week.
In non-CEQA cases, the litigants usually would have had at least a two-month window before a court would have nudged the plaintiff.
City Manager John Nachbar said this afternoon that no new talks are scheduled.
In pursuit of a compromise after a previous agreement blew up this summer following Dr. Mark Rocha’s resignation as President of West, the warring parties met for about 3½ hours last Wednesday at City Hall. They announced they did not reach accord, but said nothing else.
Prospects are at least mixed if not sunny. “Progress was made,” a source later told the newspaper. “The issues that remain do not seem insurmountable.”
