A California appellate court has considered whether the distracted behavior of city council members during a zoning review hearing deprived a business owner of due process.

Lacy Street Hospitality Service, Inc. ("Owner") leased a commercial property on which it operated a club featuring female nude dancing. The Owner sought to modify local zoning restrictions, such as extending its operating hours on weekends. The Owner filed its request for zoning modifications, and these requests were considered by the City of Los Angeles's Zoning Administrator. The Zoning Administrator conducted a public hearing on the requested modifications and visited the property, following which he filed a detailed 22-page report granting the requested modifications.

Following the hearing, a number of local community groups who opposed the zoning modifications filed an appeal with the City Council ("Council"). The Council referred the appeal to its Planning and Land Use Management Committee. Upon hearing evidence of the adverse effects of the proposed zoning change, the Committee recommended that the Council reverse the decision of the Zoning Administrator. The Council held a public hearing on the matter and reversed the decision of the Zoning Administrator. The Owner filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the decision of the Council, but the trial court denied the Owner's request and so the Owner appealed.

The California Court of Appeal, Second District, reversed the trial court and sent the matter back to the Council because the Council had failed to give the Owner a fair hearing. The court stated that its standard of review of the Council's actions while sitting in a quasi-judicial role was the abuse of discretion standard.

The Owner had videotaped the hearing before the Council. The camera continuously scanned up and down the row of Council members, occasionally lingering on a specific member. The videotape showed the following: eight members were not in their seats at the time the matter came before the Council (three members were entirely absent from the hearing); four other Council members were visibly distracted by such activities as eating, talking with aides, and reviewing paperwork; one member talked on his cellphone while two other members engaged in a private conversation; and another member walked around the chamber entering into discussions with other members of the Council. Only five members appeared to devote their attention to the presentation made by the Owner, but even some of them turned their attention elsewhere at different points during the Owner's presentation. Following the completion of the Owner's presentation, the challengers to the zoning modifications had made their case, but the behavior of the Council members did not change during this presentation.

The court stated that the inattentiveness of the Council members while sitting in a quasi-judicial role denied the Owner a fair hearing and thus the due process of law. The Council had reversed a detailed investigative report by the Zoning Administrator without making "a reasoned decision based upon hearing all the evidence and argument, which is the essence of sound decision making". Since the Owner did not receive a fair hearing, the court reversed the lower court and sent the matter back to the Council so that it could conduct another hearing.

Lacy St. Hospitality Serv., Inc., v. City of Los Angeles, No. B170716, 2004 WL 3016280 (Cal. Ct. App. Dec. 30, 2004). [This is a citation to a Westlaw document. Westlaw is a subscription, online legal research service. If an official reporter citation should become available for this case, the citation will be updated to reflect this information].