LITIGATION – Court orders City to pay legal fees in short-term rental case
by Mark McDermott A Superior Court judge has ordered the City of Manhattan Beach to pay the attorney fees for a resident who successfully challenged the legality of its short-term rental ban. Judge Mitchell Beckloff ordered the City to pay resident Darby Keen $146,124 in attorneys fees. The fees were incurred during the City’s appeal of the original judgment against the short-term rental ban enacted by the City Council in 2019. Another $500,000 in legal fees remain in contention over the original case, in which Superior Court James Chalfant ruled against the City’s ban. Those fees are under consideration by an appeals court. Attorney Frank Angel, who represented Keen, said that there are larger issues for the City than just the fee award. He said that the City repeatedly made decisions that were both legally and financially unsound. “The City Council could have saved itself this expense and the expense of paying their own attorneys had they not been so stubborn in fighting us all the way up to the California Supreme Court, based on legal theories that made no sense for the coastal zone,” Angel said. “Within days after we filed suit in July 2019, we offered to dismiss the case in…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com