How a California Environmental Quality Act court will rule at a March 23 hearing that centers on oil drilling in Baldwin Hills, and its affect on the environment and the surrounding neighborhoods, is anyone’s guess.

But prior legal cases that bear some similarities — and in others not as many — to the lawsuits filed by Culver City residents and the city government against Los Angeles County and oil and gas company Plains, Exploration and Production could provide a glimpse into what a court might consider when evaluating the plaintiffs’ cases.

Four lawsuits were filed after the Board of Supervisors approved an environmental impact report (EIR) and the land use regulations that govern the Inglewood Oilfield near the Culver City border on Sept. 28, 2008.

The plaintiffs, which included the Culver City government, allege that the land use regulations and EIR are not stringent enough to protect the health and safety of the homeowners in Culver Crest, Baldwin Hills and Windsor Hills neighborhoods. In addition, they contend that insufficient time was given to craft convincing arguments against approving the land use documents and the environmental analysis.

PXP and county lawyers say the land use document, known as a community standards district, are among the strongest regulations on oilfields in the state and argue that they are much better than the previous ordinance.

Culver City subsequently implemented a moratorium on oil drilling within its boundaries the following year. On Sept. 21, PXP, which is seeking to drill four new oil wells in Culver City, sued the city over what it claims is an illegally implemented moratorium.

Last year, the lawsuits were consolidated and will be heard at the same hearing.

In one of the oil drilling related cases, in 1998, the city of Hermosa Beach was sued by Santa Monica-based Macpherson Oil for breach of contract after the South Bay beach city’s residents passed an ordinance prohibiting oil drilling within its boundaries. MacPherson had signed oil lease agreements with Hermosa Beach for expanded oil exploration and was planning to drill new wells before the initiative was passed.

MacPherson prevailed in court after it sued Hermosa Beach, and the case was to be heard last summer solely on how much money Hermosa Beach should pay MacPherson in damages. But after a Superior Court judge refused the city’s motion to dismiss the case, Hermosa Beach appealed and the trial was put on hold.

James Bright, the attorney for MacPherson, does not see many similarities in the
Culver City-PXP lawsuit and his client’s.

“In our case, we had a lease with Hermosa Beach not only to drill for oil, but also part of the lease provided the company with a drill site,” Bright explained. “The question is, does (the voter-approved moratorium on oil drilling) breach the city’s agreement with MacPherson?”

Hermosa Beach’s lawyers contend the city had the right to deny drilling and well permits to MacPherson based on sufficient evidence that oil operations carried health and safety risks.

These reported claims were not known at the time that the lease was signed, Hermosa Beach officials say.

In its defense against the moratorium legal action, Culver City has made health and safety concerns one of the cornerstones in its petitions, as well as in its case against the county.

Bright, who was not very familiar with the Culver City case, said it could turn on whether the plaintiffs could prove, like Hermosa Beach sought to, that there was a chance that residents’ safety could be jeopardized by oil exploration that is not sufficiently monitored.

“The essence of it could be, are there legitimate health and public safety issues, or are there people who just don’t believe in oil drilling?” Bright asked.

Superior Court Judge Antonio Barretto Jr. said judges often look to existing case law to help guide them when evaluating a petition or motion before them.

“If a court is lucky, it has pre-existing decisions that they can look at to formulate a current decision,” Barretto, a Culver City resident who hears criminal cases at the LAX Airport Courthouse, told the News. “If there’s nothing locally to guide them they can look at interpretations or similar situations in other jurisdictions.”

The judge said jurists do have some flexibility when taking legal precedents under consideration.

“There is a legal theory called stare decisis, which means that you’re looking for existing law,” Barretto explained. “But that theory lasts only as long as the court wants to follow it, because courts are able to reassess existing law and essentially say that times have changed.”

Barretto listed restrictive racial covenants on property that prohibited Latinos and blacks from owing homes in certain areas as an example of laws that have changed after being upheld for several decades.

“But as time went on, the interpretation changed, and they were declared unconstitutional,” he said.

Another case that drew more media attention than the MacPherson-Hermosa Beach case were the lawsuits brought by former students of Beverly Hills High School against the city, the Beverly Hills School District and Venoco Oil, which operated an oil well near the school’s athletic facilities. The lawsuits, which involved famed legal clerk and environmental advocate Erin Brockovich, and the late attorney Ed Masry, claimed that toxic fumes made more than 700 students who attended the high school from the 1970s through the 1990s ill with cancer.

Venoco was cited on three occasions by the South Coast Air Quality Management District regarding the operation of the oil well. The oil firm was required by the air quality district to maintain continuous air quality monitoring at the school and prevent any oil field gas from escaping into the atmosphere, according to court records.

(Homeowners in Culver Crest were awakened in 2006 by noxious gas fumes from an oil well in the Inglewood Oil Field, which prompted a two-year moratorium on PXP on all new oil-related activities, including drilling new oil wells.)

On Dec. 12, 2006, a court dismissed 12 cases of the 100 filed by the plaintiffs on summary judgment. The court ruled there was no indication that the contaminant, benezene, caused cancer.

Steven Gourley thinks the Culver City plaintiffs should have emphasized the notion of environmental injustice, a legal position that lawyers and environmental advocates often make in minority neighborhoods that are often disproportionately targeted for incinerators, power facilities and other industrial uses.

“Baldwin Hills and Ladera Heights have significant -African-American residents,” Gourley, a Culver Crest resident, noted. “Why isn’t anyone talking about that?”

Although Culver Crest, Baldwin Hills and Ladera Heights are home to more affluent populations, Gourley, the president of the Culver City Unified School District Board of Education, says the case for environmental injustice has merit because of the circumstances.

“When you’re dealing with David versus Goliath, it’s always unjust,” he said.

PXP’s legal representatives would not comment on the Hermosa Beach or Beverly Hills cases, but expressed confidence in their chances at prevailing in court.

“The matter has not been completely briefed,” Jeffery Dinzer, the oil company’s lead attorney, told the News. “PXP believes that the moratorium is illegal and the council illegally implemented it.”

Barretto said judges are not bound to follow existing case law.

“Generally speaking, they should follow the law, but they may change it if they think that it’s time for the law to change,” the judge said, adding that this is typical in environmental, criminal or civil law.

Gourley, who as a former member of the Culver City City Council had various dealings with oil companies, said they often do not bring necessarily pristine reputations into court, and in some instances, that can work against them.

“Oil companies lie all the time,” Gourley asserted. “If a judge has dealt with oil companies before, he’ll know that anything they say is suspicious.”

Bright agreed that among a certain population in urban settings, oil and gas firms are not always popular.

“It’s definitely hard to find a constituency for an oil company,” the attorney acknowledged.

Todd Cardiff, who has been representing the Citizen’s Coalition for a Safe Community and David Cranston, who has been assisting Culver City with its legal action and in writing its new oil ordinance, did not return calls seeking comment.