At the Motion hearing on Friday, September 6, Redlands/LAFCO’s attorney argued the same points they had stated in their Opposition; COMET’s attorney added some information. Judge Alvarez smiled and said he was familiar with Tom’s Burgers, but declined to state his tentative ruling and said that, since “these things tend to find their way to the Court of Appeal” he would issue his written decision later and be very careful how he did so. (Ed.’s note: sometimes the judges want time to think more fully; Judge Alvarez had only gotten the case that previous Tuesday, because he is a “CEQA” judge, or one of the few that rule on such cases and COMET had complained about Redlands and LAFCO’s violating CEQA laws, but those complaints were not addressed in the Motion. Sometimes the judges just don’t want the attorneys to argue more when they state their intended decision and in this case both attorneys had a lot of arguments!)
Judges have up to 90 days to issue a decision.