This is the lawsuit I was served with in 2017 and the response I/my family’s lawyer, submitted to the court in response to the lawsuit. The case went to trial in the Ukiah court house on December 17th and 18th, 2018.
The Ruling from the court is the final third document.
So that decision was the judge’s response. The AVLT didn’t seem satisfied with this ruling, so they changed tactics. They started submitting a waterfall of after trial briefs that claimed that the easement was written to prevent commercial uses in forested areas of the property.
There is no mention of prohibiting commercial use in the forest zone contained in the lawsuit, in fact just the opposite. These new briefs were in complete contradiction to what their lawsuit had been requesting. I will post the multitude of filings that the AVLT filed after the trial if there is interest. The actual filed lawsuit states:
“Plaintiff informed Burns/Hirsch in a draft letter dated November 25, 2014…that Plaintiff is willing to grandfather in, and allow continued use of the three cabins…”
And again, the lawsuit repeats a second time;“…the three existing cabins shall not be used as residences but only as transient hospitality for vacationers and guests…”
And Exhibit 3/the letter of November 25, 2014, submitted as evidence by AVLT, states: “We think it’s reasonable to interpret [transient hospitality] as permitting rental of the cabins…”
All the statements from the AVLT continually reference all cabins, clearly including rental of the cabin in the forest. The letter and lawsuit clearly show that the AVLT was always fine with the rental of all the cabins, including in the forest, until the AVLT saw that the easement and judge’s ruling allowed the commercial use that the owners had repeatedly stated. They then switched tactics; to use redundant and imprecise wording in the easement to remove as much commercial use of the property as they could, despite the AVLT agreeing previously for over 14 years with the owners sentiments that Transient Hospitality was intended and allowed in the forest and in all three cabins and zones.
For reasons that the judge seemed to attribute to the rules of legal contract interpretation, she decided to agree with the AVLT on this point. She issued a revised decision;
This decision is pretty much the same as the first one, but now the judge has ruled that commercial uses in any forested area on our property is limited. That’s not what we wrote our conservation easement for, and it’s highly disappointing to us that the AVLT would file a lawsuit to change something they know we didn’t want.
But we are willing to accept it. At least the decision is final and the nightmare of being sued by the Anderson Valley Land Trust is over. When the AVLT sued us back in 2017, we immediately requested mediation. In fact, the easement contract that binds the AVLT and us explicitly states that we should go to mediation before a lawsuit. Too bad that didn’t happen. The AVLT openly stated that they didn’t have any desire to mediate with us and wanted to go straight to trial. But they came to mediation and we thought it was worth a shot. In mediation the AVLT made us an offer; The offer was, the AVLT would drop the lawsuit if we would tear down and remove the cabin/structure that is in the redwood forest on our property. This structure has existed on our property for decades before we created an easement with the AVLT in 2005. My family and I found this offer confusing and offensive. We saw this offer as a complete lack of support for our stated goals in the conservation easement. We felt the AVLT did not support the conservation goals we had clearly written into the document meant to protect our land and cabins.
One reason we can easily accept the revised ruling is that we already suggested it. We also made several offers in mediation to try to end the lawsuit. The most relevant offer was; We offered to not undertake any commercial activities in the forested section of our property. The AVLT obviously refused that offer. And then fought to have the judge rule for that option, once they saw they had lost.
I continue to be hopeful that the AVLT will move forward in good faith. It does not seem that this lawsuit was approached in good faith. I have volunteered to be a member of the Anderson Valley Land Trust in an effort to help them avoid similar lawsuits in the future. I continue to support the idea of land conservation and environmental protections of forests and waterways in and around Boonville and Anderson Valley, as my family always has. -C.T. Rowe
Peachland Ranch 