COMET FILES MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Counsel for C.O.M.E.T. (Community of Mentone Empowered Together) recently dropped off COMET’s Motion for Summary Judgment, against the City of Redlands, for filing in San Bernardino Superior Court. “A Motion is a written document – this time several documents – which is then set for hearing; ours will be heard July 11,” explained COMET’s counsel. “This type of Motion attempts to obtain judgment without going to trial,” she explained.

“The judge threw out our cause of action for Civil Extortion, based on his ruling on a different kind of civil extortion than we had pled,” she added, “so all we had left was a cause of action for fraud. Our Motion details, and provides tangible evidence of, Redlands’ fraudulent 1956 annexation of part of Mentone’s Section 7 and its Sections 18-22, which was not contiguous to Redlands’ city limits, in order to connect the city limits to the then-Lockheed facility. The contiguity statute required and still requires such connecting strips to be at least 200 feet wide at their narrowest point and no longer than 300 feet; Redlands’ strip was 2-3 miles long, but didn’t stop at the Lockheed facility. The rest of the strip took jurisdiction over much of Mill Creek. A newspaper account at the time titled that Mentone territory Redlands’ ‘East Lugonia’ and also quoted that the strip would ‘skirt’ Mentone.

“Another such ‘strip’ in 1965, in order to connect its water processing property out Mill Creek road to property in or near the Creekbed that it had already annexed, also violated the contiguity law by utilizing a residential property that was too narrow and too long.

“The Motion also details Redlands’ fraudulent enactment of its 1997 Measure U, a ‘slow-growth initiative,’ which is actually being used to enlarge Redlands’ borders deeply into Mentone territory [Ed.’s note: and San Timoteo Canyon]. The Motion also details Redlands’ enforcement of Measure U by its insistence on ‘pre-‘annexation ‘agreements,’ or annexation ‘Agreements,’ both of which force Mentone territory into Redlands’ city limits, just in order for Mentone property developers to obtain water and sewer service to new developments. Those ‘agreements’ are unenforceable under California law,” she added.

“The Motion asks the Court to make such findings of fact and order judgment against Redlands. As for monetary damages, they are considered mostly incalculable. What Mentone wants from Redlands is for it to agree to stop taking our territory and to give back what it has taken. We also want LAFCO (the San Bernardino Local Agency Formation Commission) to take us out of Redlands’ sphere of influence, so that we may govern ourselves,” she concluded.

Readers who wish to read the entire Motion or other documents in the case may download them at portal.sb-court.org/portal, at $.50 per page, or obtain them in pdf format, without exhibits, by contacting attorneyjoycerapp2@aol.com.

Other recent developments include LAFCO’s attempts to obtain more documents and answers from COMET via its three Motions to Compel, set for June 2. “LAFCO’s motion to compel further documents was served and filed a day too late, according to the law, and COMET’s answers to the repetitive sets of questions were as complete as they could be at the time,” stated COMET’s counsel.