This is just a short note to memorialize the fact that a bunch of paperwork was filed in the case of Cory Spencer v. Lunada Bay Boys. I have added the new material to the Archive.Org page (look for docket numbers 204 through 207). There are links to and brief descriptions of the new material after the break. Don’t forget to look at the plaintiffs’ responses to the defendants’ interrogatories, which aren’t always available to the public via PACER. In this case they were put on the record as part of a lawyer’s declaration. And also don’t forget that there’s an upcoming hearing on the plaintiffs’ motion to certify the case as a class action, scheduled for Tuesday, February 21 at 10 a.m. in Judge Otero’s courtroom 10C in the First Street Courthouse downtown.

• Defendants City of PVE and Chief Kepley Motion to Strike Declaration of Philip King — Philip King is an economist hired by the plaintiffs to calculate the damages done by the Lunada Bay Boys and their PVE cronies over the decades in which they effectively excluded the public from the beach. In this motion some of the defendants argue that he’s not qualified to calculate stuff like this. His declaration is available here, so you can judge for yourself if the defendants’ objections seem sound.
• Declaration of Jacob Song in Support of Previous Motion — Jacob Song is one of the defendants’ attorneys. This declaration is pretty interesting as it contains both questions and answers in a number of interrogatories sent to the plaintiffs by the defendants. The answers are somewhat formulaic, but there’s a lot of interesting material in there. It’s my impression that interrogatories aren’t routinely made available to the public, at least via PACER, so it’s also interesting to see these for that reason.
• Plaintiffs’ Reply to City of PVE and Kepley’s Opposition to Motion for Class Certification — A highly technical response to the defendants’ various arguments that there’s no legally valid class of plaintiffs the existence of which is necessary for the case to be certified as a class action.
• Plaintiffs’ Reply to Individual Defendants’ Oppositions to Motion for Class Certification — This is similar to the previous item, but in response to the oppositions filed by the individual defendants. It contains this memorable and plausible summary: “Eight members of the Lunada Bay Boys (“Individual Defendants”) collectively filed over 220 pages in opposition to Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, along with 225 more pages filed by the City of Palos Verdes Estates and Chief Kepley. Conspicuously absent from this glut of paper is a single declaration from any Defendant, or any other material witness, refuting any of the conduct described in declarations submitted by Plaintiffs.” Ouch!
• Plaintiffs’ Responses to Various Defendants’ Objections to Evidence — TL;DR:¹ Dear Judge Otero, the defendants didn’t actually think about their objections to our motion for class certification or even read the applicable law. Instead they filed hundreds of pages of copypasta and the law they didn’t read says they lose and the class should be certified. Thanks for your time.

Image of a road in Palos Verdes Estates is by Ken Lund who has kindly made it available via Flickr under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

1. A nonexpert, fairly uninformed summary of this pleading.