(Written by kencraw)

Yesterday was the final day of the court hearing before Judge Miller to decide the fate of the Cal training center. Here are links to the articles I’m aware of:

• SF Chronicle article by Carolyn Jones
• AP article at SFGate.com
• ABC/KGO article
• CBS article
• Daily Cal article

Sadly, Chris Avery has not put up one of his excellent articles on the final day of the hearing and it looks like perhaps he wasn’t there. UPDATE at 9:10 PM 10/12: Turns out Mr. Avery was just taking his sweet time to write his wrap up article… I’ve never done that 🙂 .

There’s nothing in those articles that we didn’t already know because the seventh and final day of the hearing was closing arguments. In other words they were just saying what they had said before in summary form. The only thing I noticed in the closing arguments was a slight change in emphasis for the plaintiffs spending more time on environmental issues like the trees and the indian burials (how long do we have to listen to this crud) and less time on the two versus one building stuff. That says to me that the plaintiffs are less confident in their previous strategy and are looking for new avenues to emphasize and hopefully (for them) win with. More UPDATE at 9:10 PM 10/12: I find it very interesting that Mr. Avery’s article give a completely different feel about the issues, much more reflecting the previous points that I had heard from earlier in the hearings. One of two things is true: One, Mr. Avery has a very different take on things than his peers in the media or two, the media is obsessed with the stupid Oak trees and things like Indian burials. Call me crazy but I tend to lean towards number two.

The only other interesting things is some of the quotes that came out of it that you can find in the articles. The one that I thought was the most interesting was the sophmoric statement by tree-sitter lawyer Stephen Volker:

Volker said he would accept the offer to replace mature trees with saplings only if the campus would agree to put 3-year-old trees on the field for their next football game.

What interests me about that quote is it is the first time in all of the proceedings we’ve heard the lawyers for the plaintiffs lose their cool. So far to date they’ve been very tempered making their arguments like good lawyers should. However, once the University brought in its lead lawyer from the firm it hired who was much more biting in his comments, there’s finally a crack in the lawyer’s good behavior. Perhaps the University should have done this earlier as to get the plaintiffs riled up earlier and let Judge Miller see their true colors.

In any case, there won’t be a ruling for a minimum of two weeks because Judge Miller has given both sides that time to submit their final briefs and arguments. It seems clear that it’ll take her a minimum of a couple more days after that to parse the final documents and write her decision. That puts a decision at the earliest the week of the WSU game around the 1st of November and more likely the week of the USC game. At the rate this is going, I’d prefer the ruling to be held until the Monday after the USC game to prevent any further issues at the stadium, particularly during the USC game which will likely still be a HUGE game despite USC’s stumbling against Stanford last Saturday.

More UPDATE at 9:10 PM 10/12: Some final thoughts on Mr. Avery’s article… I’m glad to hear the University lawyers make clear to the judge that the City has no right to tell the University what to do or where to build its facilities. All they can do is ensure that the EIR was complete so that the UC Regents, yes the Regents not the City, could make an educated decision on the project and follow all of the laws associated to the APZ. The city has no right to tell the University that Golden Gate fields is a better place for the facility. Finally, it’s stupid to nitpic the EIR to death when the Regents are going to make the same decision after those nitpics are resolved. Hopefully the judge was listening to all of this because the University’s lawyer summarized for Mr. Avery what we’ve all known to be the case:

Some CEQA lawsuits have resulted in rulings by judges that particular items in an EIR had to be improved.

He said that if that happened, UC could follow the judge’s instructions to amend those items – and to hold public hearings about the changes if necessary, and to then recertify the EIR.

We asked whether – in that instance – it would be harder for the plaintiffs to file or support a subsequent lawsuit. Olson strongly agreed, but said he fully expected plaintiffs to sue again on whatever grounds could be developed.

Hopefully Judge Miller will see the plaintiffs for the obstructions they are and won’t let that happen.