(Written by kencraw)

Well it FINALLY happened. Judge Miller ruled that the University can proceed with construction. There’s only one catch: She’s leaving the injunction in place for another 7 days to allow an appeal to be filed. Of course the tree-sitters have promised to. The City of Berkeley will likely decide tonight whether to join in. The Panaramic Hills Association status is unclear at this time. Of course, despite the promise of an appeal, whoever tries to has to find an appellate judge who is willing to put an injuction back in place both in the very short term to hear an argument for an extended appeal and the longer term for the length of the appeal. Additionally a bond will have to be posted if the City doesn’t join in.

UPDATE at 12:45 AM:

I’ve learned two things:

1. There is an automatic extension of the injunction of 20 days after an appeal is filed. That means 7/22 + 7 days -> 7/29 + 20 days -> 8/18 is “Cal Fan Appreciation Day” assuming all goes as expected and an appellate injunction is not granted.
2. It seems that the City of Berkeley has delayed their closed door city council meeting where they’ll determine whether to appeal until Thursday, although this is unclear.

To reiterate the basics of what I’ve said before about the appeal:

Everyone knows the appeal will fail. The only question is whether the appeal will cause a delay. The only way it causes a delay is if there is a new injunction put in place. That means they need to find an appellate judge who will grant an injunction and they’ll either need to post a VERY large bond (think 20 million) or get the City of Berkeley to join in, meaning the bond requirement is waived.

So basically, because there is no way the tree-sitters or the home owners are going to put up couple million bucks (10% of total bond) this could all be over real soon if the City of Berkeley decides not to appeal. Since Judge Miller also gave 85% of the court costs (excluding lawyer fees) to the University, the City is already facing the bitter pill of playing Cal approximately $50k-$100k. The combined costs of the additional lawyer fees for an appeal and the likely assessment of paying even MORE court costs to Cal after the appeal, in my view, will likely have the City waiving the white flag here. But that was a sentence written by a rational human being and the City has a history of defying all logic.

The even better news is that in the end, it probably won’t matter if the City of Berkeley joins the appeal. I have higher hopes than ever before that these bozos won’t even be able to find the appellate judge who will grant them an injunction. Considering just how bad of a smack down they got in the initial trial, it seems very unlikely to me. The difference here is that we’ll have to wait until August 18th to find out because they’ll have that entire time to try and find a judge who will do it.

This is all a long way of saying that, if you were planning on reserving a chain-saw at a bay area tool rental place on August 18th, you might want to get it reserved pretty soon.