“Belts and suspenders.” That’s a phrase that we lawyers use to describe how we write contracts and other documents repeating the same concepts multiple times. (“Repeating” and “multiple times”—you see, belts and suspenders.)

Sometimes the belts and suspenders are verbiage, but belts and suspenders have a role in legal drafting, because sometimes you need them to make sure everyone knows what the parties to a contract have agreed to.

Take the 1984 Agreement between Santa Monica and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that settled litigation over Santa Monica Airport (SMO). The agreement stated clearly that the City could not close SMO until July 1, 2015. That was the “belt,” but the agreement didn’t say explicitly that on July 1, 2015, the City could close the airport (which would have been the “suspenders”). The belt held for 24 years, during which time both the City and the FAA knew (and acted accordingly) that the intent of the agreement was that the City could close SMO July 1, 2015. When, however, in 2008 the FAA decided to change its interpretation of the agreement, the missing suspenders gave the FAA cover to tell Santa Monica that though it couldn’t close SMO before July 1, 2015, it couldn’t do so afterwards either. Until last week, the City and the FAA were scheduled to go to trial in August to determine this issue.

When in 2003 Santa Monica negotiated an increase in a 1994 grant from the FAA to build a blast wall at SMO, the intent of the parties was not to have the 2003 money extend the term of the 1994 agreement. The 2003 amendment to the 1994 agreement had a belt (a clause saying that nothing in the amendment altered any other provisions of the 1994 agreement, which presumably included the term), but not suspenders (an explicit mention that the new money would not extend the term). The FAA later ruled that the new money extended the term of the 1994 agreement, and until last week the City had that ruling on appeal in the Ninth Circuit.

I bring up these examples of the perils of contract drafting because they provide the context for Santa Monica and the FAA’s most recent attempt to settle their differences over SMO: the settlement agreement they entered into last Saturday, which U.S. District Court Judge John F. Walter confirmed yesterday.

That context is twofold: (1), that because of the lack of suspenders in the 1984 and 2003 agreements, instead of having closed the airport in 2015 the City was involved until last week in a multi-front series of court cases, which were expanding whack-a-mole style, and which would not be resolved for years (and possibly not ever successfully); and (2), because in reviewing the new agreement, based on past disappointments one wants to be sure the agreement has both belts and, where needed, suspenders.

Taking up first Context 2, let’s look in the new agreement for the suspenders that were missing in 1984: an express acknowledgement that at the end of the term of the agreement, Santa Monica can close the airport. The new settlement agreement has the belt (it provides that the City’s remaining obligations to SMO continue only until Dec. 31, 2028), but also has this language (in the last paragraph of Section VI):

“[Unless the City agrees otherwise] the Parties agree that the City may, in its sole discretion at any time on or after January 1, 2029, cease to operate the Airport as an airport and may close the Airport to all aeronautical use forever [on 30 days’ notice].”

Ahh! An explicit statement that the City of Santa Monica can close SMO on a date certain! The missing suspenders from the 1984 Agreement! (There are community members who are concerned that a future City Council would not exercise its right to close SMO, but it’s a more plausible risk that a future council would keep the airport open if the current one hadn’t entered into the settlement agreement. A future council burdened with expensive and unending litigation, that the City might well be losing, would be more likely to cave in. Remember the “visioning process” that the council instigated after the City lost the Class C&D litigation with the FAA?)

—Western end of soon-to-be shortened SMO runway

But wait, there’s more. Perhaps the most important provisions of the new settlement agreement are two provisions that are true suspenders. Why? Because they don’t add anything substantive to the agreement, but are crucial. Both relate to the FAA’s future actions.

The first is in Section I, where the City and the FAA settle all their claims, including claims under the Notice of Investigation and Cease and Desist order that the FAA served on the City last year. But the second paragraph of Section I goes beyond the mutual release. In true suspender fashion the paragraph requires the FAA to send to all the private parties bringing FAA administrative actions against Santa Monica (“Part 16 complaints”) a letter requesting that they withdraw their complaints. Although the FAA can’t require private parties to withdraw Part 16 complaints, the form of the letter attached to the settlement agreement includes language where the FAA tells the complainants that it will now be the terms of the settlement agreement that apply to their case, and that if the City is in compliance with the settlement agreement, the FAA will presume that the City “is meeting its obligations to the FAA.”

But the second provision about the FAA’s future action is even more important. This is Clause VIII.F, “Defense of this Agreement.” In it both parties agree to “vigorously and actively defend” the settlement and its terms “against any challenge by any individual or entity.” This means that if any aviation business contends that the settlement agreement is invalid, and that Santa Monica doesn’t have the right to close the airport (or exercise any of the other powers it has under the agreement), the FAA will take the City’s side.

There’s a lot of angst, even anger, from anti-airport activists about the settlement agreement. Most of it arises understandably from disappointment that the City’s absolute right to close the airport has been delayed from July 1, 2015 to Jan. 1, 2029. I feel the same way: I’ll be 76 then and I’m not happy to wait that long. But the true causes of the wait are the suspenders missing from the 1984 and 2003 agreements, and the resulting litigation context, not this agreement.

Additional fears arise from anxious reading of the agreement itself. For instance, many are worried about an “avigation easement” the City grants to the FAA preventing interference with aeronautical activities, but it’s clear from the agreement (although honestly there could be some suspenders making it doubly clear) that this easement only applies to the 1500 or so feet of the runway that are being decommissioned under the agreement. (From Clause II.C: “such land shall be subject to an avigation easement” (emphasis added).)

As I said in my post earlier in the week, the anti-airport, pro-park groups will need to continue to be active. The settlement agreement doesn’t end anything. Christian Fry of the Santa Monica Airport Association told a KPCC radio audience that he feels hopeful that the settlement agreement will result in the preservation of the airport, because by reducing its size, it will be more acceptable to residents.

So nothing is over. Expect another initiative, Measure D.2. La luta continua.

Yet it’s incomprehensible to me that there are anti-airport people who don’t realize that they are in a drastically improved situation from where they were a week ago. The City has neutralized the FAA! What can aviation businesses do now that they don’t have the big bad FAA backing them up? Where do they go when they can’t, realistically, file Part 16 complaints? (By the way, they’re not happy about it.)

Moreover, the City wasn’t going to be able to close the airport for years, or even reduce air traffic; now it’s as if the City won the Class C&D litigation, the City has a clear path to taking over FBO services, and true, it’s 12 years away, but we have a firm, outside date to close SMO and reason to believe that date can be accelerated.

Finally, Santa Monica faced years of litigation, litigation it might lose, or which a new council might abandon. Aggressive new challengers like JetSuiteX were popping up all over, but now the City has the advantage.

How can the settlement agreement not be a victory?

Thanks for reading.

Procrastination can pay. For the past two weeks the top item on my to-do list has read, “Blog on SMO—read dox.” “Dox,” meaning the pleadings and briefs that have been piling up in multiple pending Santa Monica Airport (“SMO”) court cases.

“Pending”—scratch that. The settlement announced Saturday between the City of Santa Monica and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) resolves all litigation between the City and the FAA. As for litigation with third parties, such as aviation businesses at SMO, the FAA agreed to defend the settlement against any challenges.

Happy now that I didn’t waste time reading those dox.

The settlement has been widely reported, even making the front page of Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. There have been many articles in the local press, such as here (Santa Monica Lookout News) and here (Santa Monica Daily Press).

Most attention has focused on the City’s getting from the FAA an absolute date, Jan. 1, 2029, by which the City can close SMO. Other important points include that the runway will be shortened to 3,500 feet, eliminating most larger (“C and D” class) jets and preventing charter services like JetSuiteX, which was already selling tickets, from operating. The City also strengthened its authority over operations at the airport.

Speaking broadly, most observers outside of Santa Monica expressed astonishment that the City got the FAA to agree that the airport could close, while within Santa Monica a considerable number of anti-airport activists are shocked that the City agreed to operate the airport for 12 more years. In fact, three members of City Council voted against the settlement for precisely that reason.

So—is it a good deal?

Well, as one of those anti-airport activists—one who believed the City’s case against the FAA was good—my initial reaction was shock. I mean, Jan. 1, 2029? It’s also impossible not to recall that this is not the first time the FAA has agreed the City could close SMO. The first time was in 1984, when the FAA agreed the City only had to keep the airport open until July 1, 2015. As of 2000 the FAA was acknowledging that after that date SMO’s future would be a “local land use matter.”

But then in 2008, for reasons I’ll get to, the FAA changed its mind. The feds said the City couldn’t close the airport in 2015; that when the 1984 agreement expired the parties would return to where they were in 1984, fighting again over the same issues. It hurts to say it, but as a result of the SMO saga, I’ve become a little more understanding of the Sagebrush Rebellion.

So is the agreement, as Council Member Kevin McKeown said to the Daily Press, a case of “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?”

I don’t believe so, and let me explain why.

First, would there have been a victory to snatch defeat from? As I’ve written often, the City had a good case that it had the right to close SMO, but that doesn’t mean it would win. The City was facing a party, the federal government, with unlimited resources, an agency, the FAA, dedicated to keeping airports open, and an incoming administration that favors business. (Not to mention a president whose most potent symbol was his private jet.) It’s significant that the law firms representing the City in its cases against the FAA advised the City to take the settlement. That was advice coming from lawyers who are naturally competitive, who like to win, and whom, incidentally, the City would have paid millions in fees if the cases continued to be litigated.

The great example of allowing enthusiasm to influence litigation was the fiasco of the City’s attempt to ban from SMO class C and D jets, an attempt that resulted in litigation that the City lost catastrophically. It felt good to ban the jets, and everyone was certain that the City was in the right. Not only, however, did the City lose and spend a lot of money doing so, but it was that case that prompted the FAA to change its interpretation of the 1984 Agreement. In years when the City should have been lying low, waiting until 2015, the C and D litigation kicked awake the sleeping dog of the FAA.

The only certainties about litigation are that it costs a lot and that no one knows how it will turn out. There is a reason that city councils discuss litigation in closed session. Decisions about legal tactics are not best made in response to public comment.

In evaluating the settlement, one also has to consider the context, namely the threat from JetSuiteX to begin the equivalent of commercial air service at SMO. If JetSuiteX succeeded, no one knows how that might have changed the political dynamic. Inevitably the aviation industry will try another initiative to keep SMO open; the vote might go differently than it did in 2014 with Measure D if voters not negatively affected by SMO are using and benefiting from it.

One is reminded of the axiom that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. (Something we are reminded of these days whenever we look at a newspaper.) The fight to close SMO is not over because the fight to keep it open is not over. The aviation industry is just as angry about the settlement as anti-airport activists. They’re fired up and they’re not ready to go.

What will be most important in coming years is that the City use its enhanced powers over the airport—enhanced more because the FAA has decided to wash its hands of SMO than because of any specific right the City obtained under the settlement—to continue to reduce operations at SMO until no one has a financial interest in keeping it open.

For those of us who want to close the airport and build a park there, it’s going to be essential to remain politically involved. Council Member Tony Vazquez, as quoted in the Daily Press, made the valid point in explaining his “No” vote on the settlement that he would “hate to see a future council cut a deal with the FAA to continue to operate this airport any longer than 12 years,” but that’s a political reality settlement or no settlement. Meaning that even if there were no settlement, a future council could decide to cease litigating against the FAA. At least the settlement neutralizes the FAA.

The settlement is not the end of SMO. But, apologies to Winston Churchill, it should be the beginning of the end.

Thanks for reading.

Last week I asked whether the other shoe, namely an FAA boot, was about to drop with respect to the Santa Monica Airport (SMO), i.e., would the Federal Aviation Administration take action to stop the City of Santa Monica from further reducing aviation operations at SMO?

The answer came Monday, when the FAA served the City with a “Notice of Investigation,” accompanied by subpoenas. The FAA gave the City ten days to respond to questions as to whether City actions and policies, including a purported refusal to enter into leases with aviation businesses, eviction notices given to two “fixed base operators” (FBOs), and its own plans to take over FBO-type operations at SMO, violate federal requirements to operate the airport “on reasonable terms.” These requirements apply primarily because of the FAA’s own ruling that Santa Monica must keep the airport open until 2023 because of federal grants the City received in 2003 and “assurances” that go along with the grants. The City says the grant assurances expired in 2014 and has appealed the FAA’s ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

What apparently motivated the agency to step in now, after the City has been chipping away at airport operations for more than a year, were eviction notices the City sent to Atlantic Aviation and American Flyers, the two FBOs that provide fuel at SMO, and the City’s plans to replace them with the City’s own operations, something the City, as owner of the airport, has the right to do. The City demanded that the two FBOs vacate by October 15. In its notice, the FAA “strongly recommends” that the City drop the eviction notices until everything is resolved with the FAA.

Based on language in the FAA’s notice of investigation, the investigation’s purpose is to provide the basis for the FAA to issue an order to the City to keep the airport running as it has been running, at least until the City’s litigation with the FAA has been resolved.

The FAA has also demanded that the City give the agency details about how the City plans to provide aviation services once the FBOs are gone. It’s the FAA’s position that the City must continue the same services as are provided there now, and that it must provide these services using its own employees. The City disputes that it has to provide the FAA with its plans, and it also disputes that it must provide the all the services that the FBOs currently provide. While it’s possible that these issues will be resolved informally with the FAA (the City told the FAA that it would “consult cooperatively” with the FAA), if the FAA issues an order based on its investigation, these issues will likely be litigated.

It’s presumptuous to suggest legal tactics without having access to all the information, but I can’t help but be reminded of the old tai chi adage that if you’re standing on railroad tracks and a train is bearing down, the way to stop the train from running you over is not to put your hands up and try to block it, but rather to step off the tracks. Meaning that it’s not in the City’s interests to find itself operating under the strictures of an FAA administrative order or, worse, an injunction. You never know how broadly an order or an injunction will extend.

It’s also going to take more than 16 days (Atlantic and American Flyers were told to vacate by Oct. 15) for the City to staff up for whatever FBO services it plans to provide. Many people want the City to close the airport immediately, but if the City evicts the FBOs and then offers nothing in the way of aviation services, that’s inviting an order from the FAA to freeze the status quo. If the City can’t go to court and show the judge a credible plan to maintain a reasonable level of aviation services, then there’s no way the City could get the order overturned.

It’s time for a little tai chi. The City should withdraw the eviction notices, as the FAA “strongly” recommends, to slow the FAA’s process down, and concurrently begin developing its plan to provide FBO services. The City can reinstate the eviction notices once it has its services plan ready to implement. One hopes this would forestall FAA direct action against the City during the time that the City is pursuing its Ninth Circuit appeal of the grant assurances case and as it gets ready for next summer’s trial in Federal District Court of the City’s action to confirm the City’s rights to close the airport.

* * *

In the good airport news department, Tuesday night the City Council approved concept plans for the expansion of Airport Park onto 12 acres of land that until 2015 were used to park airplanes. The park designers, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, will now proceed to develop detailed plans, with start of construction scheduled for 2018. City staff will now proceed to research funding options. Hint: Vote Yes on the County parks bond, Measure A on the November 8 ballot.

Thanks for reading.

With the latest developments concerning the future of Santa Monica Airport (SMO), I’m willing to say that we’re at the beginning of the end. One way or another, the future of the airport will be sealed within two or maybe three years. I’m optimistic enough (I hope not foolish enough), to say that the end that we’re at the beginning of is the end of SMO as an airport.

So what’s happening? For one, Tuesday night the Santa Monica City Council will vote to close down aviation uses at SMO “as soon as legally permitted,” and with a goal of July 1, 2018. This action will be important, because formally deciding to close the airport will clarify the City’s position in at least two court cases. The council’s action, however, will not be the primary reason we’re at the beginning the end: merely saying something is so doesn’t make it happen.

More important to closing the airport was that last week the City lost an appeal at the Federal Aviation Administration. Yes, losing the appeal was good news. The appeal was of an FAA administrative decision that the City had to operate the airport until 2023 because of money it received from the FAA in 2003. The L.A. Times made a big deal about the City losing the appeal, saying that Santa Monica had “lost another round in effort to close” SMO, but in terms of the timeline to close the airport, in fact it was a victory for the City to get the FAA finally to make a decision, which the agency had continually delayed. The City should have lost this battle a year ago!

Now that the City has the decision, it can appeal it to a neutral forum, namely the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. Unfortunately the Ninth Circuit is backed up, and based on the experience with other SMO litigation it’s likely that the City won’t have a decision for at least 18 months. The City’s case is strong, however, as the FAA administrators had to stretch to rule against Santa Monica. I predict that the City will win this appeal.

Speaking of the Ninth Circuit, it’s mostly because of a Ninth Circuit ruling that I’m willing to predict that we are beginning the end. That was the decision back in May when a three-judge panel unanimously reinstated the City’s own case against the FAA. The City brought that case to have the courts declare that the City could close the airport notwithstanding a clause in a 1948 agreement under which the City agreed to operate SMO in perpetuity, but the trial judge in the case had dismissed the City’s complaint on procedural grounds. The City claims that the perpetuity clause is not enforceable; it’s impossible to read the Ninth Circuit opinion and believe that the judges disagree with the City.

As a result of the reversal on appeal, there will now be a trial on the merits, and as of last week there is a trial date: August 29, 2017. (See you in a year, on an Expo train to the federal courthouse in downtown L.A.)

Whoever loses at trial is bound to appeal, and so both the appeal of the FAA ruling and the City’s case against the FAA will grind on for at least two years. No doubt that’s why the City Council resolution to be voted on Tuesday calls for a goal of closing the airport July 1, 2018.

There are questions about what will happen in the meantime at the airport. Specifically, a number of anti-airport activists want the City to evict aviation tenants at the airport whose leases expired in 2015. In particular, the focus is on Atlantic Aviation, which is responsible for nearly all the jet traffic at SMO.

It’s hard not to sympathize with these activists and their arguments, since after a business loses its lease, that’s usually it. (No rent control for businesses!) But the City has walked a fine line on the leases—for good reasons, and to good effect. What the City has done is to take steps to reduce the profitability of the aviation businesses at SMO, and then negotiate with them to leave voluntarily. Primarily this has involved taking away lessees’ rights to grant subleases, which was a big source of profits. Using these strategies, which have included carrots as well as sticks, the City has caused two of the largest aviation businesses at the airport, Gunnell and Justice Aviation, to leave.

Originally the City’s caution with the leases arose from fear that that if the City evicted the aviation businesses, the FAA would seek an injunction, as it has in past litigation with the City, to freeze operations at SMO. In other words, the FAA would claim that the City was closing the airport de facto, and had to be stopped with an injunction.

So far the FAA hasn’t done that. We don’t know if the agency has held back because the City hasn’t given the agency grounds to do so, or because the agency is concerned that it would lose in court. We don’t know what would happen if the City evicts Atlantic, but certainly it would be better if Atlantic should choose to vacate as Gunnell and Justice have done.

The City now has another reason to be careful. Now that it has its cases where it wants them, in federal court, the City has to be cautious not to do anything that would annoy or anger the judges hearing the cases. Judges don’t like to be shown up. If a plaintiff is asking for relief from a judge, the judge doesn’t want to hear (from the defendant) that the plaintiff has gone off and taken its own action before the judge can make a decision.

As much as I wish we could wish the jets away, and turn SMO into a great park sooner, I have to take the side of caution and . . . patience.

Thanks for reading.

The wheels of justice have ground slowly when it comes to the Santa Monica Airport, but yesterday a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals kicked them into a higher gear with a ruling that upended the balance of power between the City of Santa Monica and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The unsigned, seven-page “Memorandum” decision reinstated the City’s lawsuit, filed in 2013, that asked that the federal courts declare what the City’s rights are to the land at the airport. In 2014 a district judge dismissed the case, ruling that the City had filed the action too late, i.e., after the applicable 12-year statute of limitations had expired. He ruled that the clock had begun to tick in 1948. That was when the City and the federal government signed a post-World War II “Instrument of Transfer” (IOT) that returned control of the airport to Santa Monica, but which contained a clause requiring Santa Monica to operate the airport in perpetuity. If the City didn’t operate the airport, then the IOT said that property the feds were transferring to the City would “revert.” In the lawsuit, Santa Monica argues that the perpetuity clause is unenforceable or, alternatively, that it was superseded by a subsequent agreement, in 1984, that allowed the City to close the airport after July 1, 2015.

In its appeal of the district court’s dismissal of the case, Santa Monica argued that it could not have known in 1948 that the land, as opposed to other property, could be subject to reversion, and that the 12-year period began in 2008, when the FAA first notified the City that if Santa Monica did not continue to operate the airport, the feds could claim the land.

It took almost two years for the City’s appeal to reach oral argument in the Ninth Circuit. Since hearing the case in March, however, the appeals court has acted fast. In yesterday’s ruling the court, echoing questions that one of its members, Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, had asked the federal government’s lawyer during oral arguments, found that the statute of limitations issue could not be decided separately from the substantive merits of the case. Specifically, whether the City was on notice in 1948 of a federal claim that would trigger the start of the 12 years depended upon whether the IOT threatened the City’s ownership of the land, as opposed to being applicable only to other property transferred from the feds to the City. Since the essence of the City’s case is that the IOT did not transfer ownership of the land, the court ruled that the scope of the IOT had to be determined before the statute of limitations issue could be determined. The court sent the case back to the district court for trial.

The Ninth Circuit judges went even further, however, and that’s where the ruling fundamentally changes the litigation landscape. While the court said it could not determine from the record what the City knew or should have known in 1948, and left that to the trial court, the judges were not satisfied with simply remanding the case. Instead, the court went out of its way to prospectively validate the City’s arguments that the 1948 perpetuity clause did not apply to the land, and prospectively invalidate as irrelevant the primary evidence the FAA has put forward as support for its argument that the perpetuity clause in the 1948 agreement is enforceable.

As for the City’s arguments, the court emphasized, by quoting three times from the IOT, that the IOT, including its penalties for violating the perpetuity clause, only applied to property transferred in the IOT. Pointedly, the judges reminded everyone that neither side disputed the fact that the City had owned title to the land when it leased it to the federal government during the War.

The evidence that the FAA has put forward to prove that the IOT did apply to the land consists chiefly of actions and legal opinions from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. For each case, the Ninth Circuit panel suggested reasons why the evidence could not prove that the parties understood the IOT to mean that the City could lose the land if it didn’t operate the airport.

The three judges, in effect, laid out the case the City should make at trial.

When asked by the Santa Monica Lookout News for the FAA’s reaction to the Ninth Circuit decision, a representative said that the agency was reviewing it. I imagine that this review will be accompanied by some consternation because, at the least, the FAA is now going to find itself in a place, an impartial federal court, where it did not want to be, litigating a question, the present day validity of the IOT, that it did not want to litigate.

On the other side of the coin, the decision validates a strategy that the City decided on a 2013 (disclosure: a strategy that I had advocated for previously), namely to seek a federal court declaration of its rights before doing anything that might precipitate a stronger reaction from the FAA.

Thanks for reading.

(The Ninth Circuit decision can be accessed here. It’s worth reading.)