In an unpublished opinion, Save Westwood Village v. Regents of the University of California, 2015 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 9281, the Second Appellate District affirmed the trial court’s rulings and rejected several CEQA challenges to the UC Regents’ approval of the Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference and Guest Center on the UCLA campus. As noted by the appellate court, the petitioner’s opening brief could have been rejected due to its failure to provide an adequate statement of facts, its limited and inaccurate citations to the record for most of its factual assertions, and its legal analyses, which was supported by only four citations to legal authority. Despite these inadequacies, the court considered each of petitioner’s four legal argument in turn, finding each to be unpersuasive.

Specifically, the court found that the Regents did not improperly pre-commit to the proposed project when they accepted a $40 million gift from the Luskins. The court found that the Regents’ acceptance of the gift did not preclude the Regents from considering any alternatives or mitigation measures because the gift was conditioned only on the Regents using the donors’ names for the proposed conference center, providing annual reports on the status of the conference center, and using the gift for charitable purposes. Nor did the court find pre-commitment from the Regents’ approval of the project budget prior to the certification of the Final EIR because the Regents approved the project design on the same day they certified the Final EIR and the approval followed lengthy, interactive planning and review process.

The court quickly rejected petitioner’s remaining claims: (1) that there were differing project descriptions regarding the amount of square footage between the EIR and the document authorizing the expenditure of funds; (2) that the project was a legally infeasible alternative because the guest center would be used for “non-academic purposes” 25% of the time; and (3) that the EIR did not consider the impact of lost parking spaces. The court found the record did not support any of these additional claims.

The lawsuit was filed in October 2012; the unfounded and barely articulated challenges entangled the project in CEQA litigation for more than three years.