The Chronicle had an article on the settlement with the Panoramic Hill Association today:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/09/BA391CRRS7.DTL

Key quote:

The settlement with Panoramic Hill states that the university will pay $75,000 to cover the group’s attorney fees. It also allows the university to host only nine or fewer events that draw crowds of more than 10,000 people over a three-year period. Cal football games and graduations do not count.

So, basically, we had to pay them off, albeit it with a pretty small sum considering the hundreds of millions of dollars at stake here. The extra events limitation is not a big deal from where I sit. I always saw the University’s advancement of having more events there as a way for the University to keep its options open. The University never had any explicit plans to hold events there.

I put “scrimmage” in quotes because it’s not really a scrimmage like it was before Tedford came along. It’s really just the one practice of the year that is open to the general public. In any case, this year it’s being held April 17th from 9 AM to 11 AM. You can find what few details there are here:

http://www.calbears.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/040710aaa.html

I personally find it very enjoyable to go to this and I always make it a habit of going. I bring the kids and it’s a very relaxed environment. Usually they give out free food but there’s no mention of it in this year’s press release and seeing how its in the morning, not at noon like in past years, I suspect there won’t be any food.

The other thing it is nice for is for those who have never been to a regular practice is to see what they’re like. You get to see the warm-ups, the drills, the partial scrimmages (like the 5-on-5’s and the 7-on-7’s), the full scrimmages, how they order things, etc..

We tend to sit on the 50 yard line about 2/3rds of the way up (about row 30-40) so if you see two big guys (my brother is coming too) with 3 boys ages 2, 5 and 6, it’s probably us and feel free to come up and say hi.

Normally I’m one of the first to renew my season tickets so I don’t even make note of the deadline of when one has to renew to guarantee their same seats. But this year, we’ve been trying to figure out what to do parking wise after last year change to the shuttle buses that make it just as expensive for the family to take the bus in as to get a parking pass.

I literally was just bored when I decided to go to Calbears.com today and say that the deadline is TODAY!

Of course, I quickly renewed my tickets and therefore consider myself lucky. For whoever else out there has forgotten, renew TODAY! It’s the last day, April 8th.

Everyone remembers the tree huggers, most remember the court case, but few remember the nuance of it all all, that the trees didn’t come down until the appellate court refused to put an injunction on construction while the appeal continued.

The most that most fans remember is that the appeal “failed”. But that’s not the truth at all. The appeal is still on-going because appeals apparently take FOREVER. All that the appellate court determined was that they wouldn’t stop construction while the appeal proceeded. The appeal would continue and the University risked having to pay larger damages and have to tear down the SAHPC if they lost. The University was willing to take that risk (thankfully) and down the trees came. Nevertheless the appeal still continues to this day.

As proof of what you likely don’t believe, I give you the case website:

http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/mainCaseScreen.cfm?dist=1&doc_id=1375717&doc_no=A122511

And for those incredulous enough to click on a link that ugly, they’ll see that the case hasn’t even made it to oral arguments despite being filed on 8/28/08.

In any case, I suspect you’re wondering why I’m bringing this up now. The reason is because there has been activity in the case in the last two weeks. The University and the Panoramic Hill Association have reached a “settlement” and thus the PHA has requested to be removed from the case. That leaves the California Oak Foundation as the lone plaintiff/appellant.

This is important for a number of reasons, the primary of which being that the “deep pockets” in the original case was the City of Berkeley followed by the PHA and coming in last with just their smelly clothes and patented ability to sit in trees (without any money) is the California Oak Foundation. Since the city decided to stay out of the appeal in the first place, PHA’s backing out makes it so there are ZERO deep pockets left. Since money is a key criteria to getting lawyers to work, it makes the likelihood this appeal will ever make it oral arguments all the less likely. I’d say it borders on a non-possibility if this weren’t Berkeley.

The other question is: What was the “settlement”?

I have absolutely no idea! All I do is read the website every once and a while to see if there’s been any activity. My guess is that it’s nothing of note, probably a “please don’t counter-sue use please” settlement. The reality is that the PHA got dragged into this and as time went on there was less and less support from the home owners to spend money on lawyers. Perhaps they got some minor concession from the University about lighting or something like that, but if they did, I’m sure it wasn’t much as the University was in the strong position at this point.

Finally, here’s the summary of the recent activity from the case website: