Represented by a team of DWT lawyers, our client, Presidio Performing Arts Foundation, won a jury verdict of $325,000. This was the culmination of a very long legal battle for the client, a nonprofit dance foundation that promotes cross-cultural understanding through dance training and performance.
The Foundation first learned in 2009 that it was going to lose the building containing its performing arts center as a result of a highway project of the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans). After numerous false starts and stops by CalTrans, the Foundation had to leave its home in 2011. After CalTrans eventually denied the Foundation’s claims for just compensation, DWT filed suit in 2013.
A first trial was in 2015. DWT won a ruling in 2017 from the state Court of Appeal that the Foundation, a nonprofit, could seek just compensation. The Court of Appeal opinion established for the first time that nonprofits have a right to seek just compensation in California for the loss of goodwill in eminent domain cases. A second jury trial took place in April 2018. The jury awarded the client $325,000.
Martin Fineman in our San Francisco office and James Parker in our Portland office tried the case. Ashlee Aguiar in the Portland office wrote many of the winning briefs.