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Media Advisory: Court Hearing to Determine the Future of Drakes Bay Oyster Company Scheduled for Jan 25

January 16, 2013 by

***MEDIA ADVISORY***

 

COURT HEARING TO DETERMINE THE FUTURE OF

DRAKES BAY OYSTER COMPANY

WHAT:  A hearing in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California to determine whether to grant a Preliminary Injunction and allow Drakes Bay Oyster Company to continue operations on their family farm.

After receiving news on November 29, 2012 from Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar that their family-run oyster farm could no longer remain on National Park Service land, the Lunny family enlisted the help of Cause of Action, as well as Stoel Rives, LLP, SSL Law Firm, LLP, and Briscoe Ivester & Bazel, LLP, to help fight for their farm, family, and their community against the government’s abuse of authority.

 

On December 18, Cause of Action filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction, which if granted, will allow Drakes Bay Oyster Company to remain in business until the merits of the National Park Service and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar decision to shut down the farm have been decided by the Court.

 

 

WHO:   Kevin Lunny, owner, Drakes Bay Oyster Company

Amber Abbasi, Chief Counsel for Regulatory Affairs at Cause of Action

Ryan Waterman, of Counsel at Stoel Rives, LLP
Peter Prows, Partner at Briscoe Ivester & Bazel, LLP

Cause of Action is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that uses investigative, legal, and communications tools to educate the public on how government accountability and transparency protects taxpayer interests and economic opportunity.

 

 

WHEN: Friday, January 25, 2013 at 2:00pm Pacific Time

 

WHERE: Oakland Courthouse, Courtroom 5 – 2nd Floor

1301 Clay Street, Oakland, CA 94612

 

RSVP: This hearing is open to the media and the public. Cameras will not be allowed inside the courtroom.

 

To speak with Kevin Lunny, owner of Drakes Bay Oyster Company or Amber Abbasi, Chief Counsel for Regulatory Affairs at Cause of Action, contact Mary Beth Hutchins,  202-400-2721 or Jamie Morris, jamie.morris@causeofaction.org, at

202-499-4232

 

 

 

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: ,

Doe v. Hamburg Amended Complaint and Exhibits

January 15, 2013 by

Amended complaint in Doe v. Hamburg et al. case filed on January 11th, 2013 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Amended Complaint

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

 

 

Filed Under: Filing Tagged With:

Bloomberg: Car Companies XP Vehicles, Limnia Sue U.S. Over Loans

January 11, 2013 by

Car Companies XP Vehicles, Limnia Sue U.S. Over Loans

 

By Tom Schoenberg on January 10, 2013
President Barack Obama’s administration played favorites on clean-energy loans while improperly blocking a carmaker and a related technology company from receiving millions in aid, according to two lawsuits.

XP Vehicles Inc. and Limnia Inc. filed complaints against the U.S. and the Energy Department today in two federal courts in Washington, seeking damages for what they say were abuses of the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program. XP Vehicles, which has dissolved, and Limnia are asking for $450 million in a case filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and at least $225 million in U.S. District Court.

“Defendants used the ATVM loan program as nothing more than a veil to steer hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to government cronies,” according to the district court complaint.

Today’s lawsuits are the latest challenge to clean-energy loan programs administered by the Energy Department, which has come under scrutiny over a $535 million loan guarantee to now- bankrupt solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC.

“While the department does not comment on pending or potential litigation, multiple investigations spanning almost two years and involving millions of pages of documents show that decisions made on the department’s loan program were made solely on the merits after careful review by the department’s technical experts,” Damien Lavera, an Energy Department spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Koch Foundation
The companies are being represented by Daniel Epstein, executive director for a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group. He previously worked for a foundation started by Koch Industries Inc. Chief Executive Officer Charles Koch, a billionaire contributor to Republican-leaning causes. He was also counsel for Republican U.S. Representative Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is leading a probe of the department’s loan programs.

XP Vehicles, or XPV, said it applied in 2008 for a $40 million loan in an effort to mass produce an SUV-style electronic vehicle with doors and other parts made from foam. The starting price for the vehicle was to be less than $20,000.

The carmaker said it believed the review of its application would take “a matter of weeks.” After meeting with the agency in May 2009, XPV said it discovered that two of its competitors — Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA) and Fisker Automotive Inc. — were receiving special assistance from agency staff with the loan application process.

Obama Contributor
One member of Tesla’s board at the time was Steven Westly, a campaign contributions bundler for Obama, while Fisker’s investors included Obama donors, according to the complaint.

Tesla received a $465 million loan in June 2009 with an interest rate of 1.6 percent, according to the complaint. XPV called one of Tesla’s products “an expensive electric car targeted at rich actors, journalists and businessmen, not average Americans.”

Fisker received a $528.7 million loan. The department in May 2011 blocked Fisker from receiving the bulk of the loan, after the company didn’t meet milestones for producing its first model.

Jeff Evanson, a spokesman for Palo Alto, California-based Tesla, and Roger Ormisher, a spokesman for Anaheim, California- based Fisker, didn’t immediately respond to e-mail messages seeking comment on the lawsuits.

XPV’s application was denied in August 2009. The reasons given by the agency involved vehicle specifications as well as manufacturing and sales plans, according to the complaint.

Limnia is also challenging applications for loans it sought that were denied.

The Energy Department has made five loans under the advanced-vehicles program — none since the 2011 bankruptcy of Solyndra — and $16 billion remains undistributed.

The court of federal claims case is XP Vehicles Inc. v. U.S. Department of Energy, 12-cv-00774, U.S. Court of Federal Claims (Washington). The district court case is XP Vehicles Inc. v. U.S. Department of Energy, 13-cv-00037, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,

Washington Post: Car company says Obama team steered stimulus funds to political favorites

January 10, 2013 by

 

 

 

Car company says Obama team steered stimulus funds to political favorites

 

Learn More

Filed Under: News Tagged With:

Washington Examiner: Nine people who know how to make government work better, more honestly

January 3, 2013 by

Read the full story here. Washington Examiner

Daniel Epstein
Executive Director,
Cause of Action
Five most needed victories:
1. Passage of the Data Act and digitalization of all federal spending data.
2. Creation of a private right of action under the Information Quality Act.
3. Creation of judicial review procedures under the Administrative Procedures Act for review of decisions of the IRS whistleblower office.
4. Uniform database of FOIA requests and processing, following current online tracking used by the Department of Labor and the FBI.
5. Legislative action based on the District of Columbia Circuit’s Aera v. Salazar decision, which would require disclosure of political influence on agency decisions, including disclosure of administrative earmarks under Executive Order 13457 – protecting taxpayers against wasteful earmarks.

Filed Under: News

Drakes Bay Oyster Company Pushes Back, 90 Day Deadline Extended

December 18, 2012 by

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                    CONTACT:

DECEMBER 18, 2012                                                   Mary Beth Hutchins or Jamie Morris

202-499-4232

Movement in Drakes Bay Oyster Company’s Push against the Government: 90 Day Deadline Is Extended

SAN FRANCISCO – The first signs of progress have come for Drakes Bay Oyster Company (DBOC) and the Lunny family in their fight against the National Park Service and Department of Interior following Sec. Kenneth Salazar’s November 29 decision that essentially shut down their business.

 

In a stipulation approved by order of the court, the Department of Justice, which is defending the government in Drakes Bay Oyster Company, et al. v. Kenneth L. Salazar, et al., conceded to requests by the DBOC attorneys as follows:

 

  1. DBOC may conduct activities involving planting and growing new oysters in the water at Drakes Estero, and will thereby avoid threatened layoffs of one-third of its employees right before the holidays.
  2. DBOC will no longer be required to remove the mobile residential units located on site and currently inhabited by Drakes Bay Oyster Company employees, thereby providing more time for those employees to look for affordable housing.
  3. DBOC now has until March 15, 2013 to complete the removal of all other personal property within the onshore area, instead of the original February 28, 2013 deadline.
  4. A hearing is set for January 25, 2013 on a request for a preliminary injunction.

 

Under the agreement, DBOC withdraws its request for a temporary restraining order that was submitted to the court last week, and instead will file a Motion for a Preliminary Injunction.

 

“While this decision brings some temporary relief for the Lunnys and their employees, the attorneys representing the best interests of DBOC know that this is only the first step in fighting against the abuse perpetrated by Secretary Salazar – at the expense of a small, family-owned and environmentally sound business,” said Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action.

 

Cause of Action, Stoel Rives, Briscoe Ivester & Bazel, and SSL Law represent Drakes Bay Oyster Company.

 

To schedule an interview with Dan Epstein, Cause of Action’s Executive Director, contact Mary Beth Hutchins,  202-400-2721 or Jamie Morris, jamie.morris@causeofaction.org, at 202-499-4232.

 

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Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: , ,

Drakes Bay Oyster Company and Cause of Action take on the Department of the Interior

December 5, 2012 by

We represent Drakes Bay Oyster Company; a small, family-run, sustainable oyster farm located in Point Reyes National Park. It’s been forty years since the National Park Service first issued a use permit for farming on the land, and now Ken Salazar has decided not to renew the permit to the Lunny family—but this family, this community and this nation isn’t going down that easily.

On Monday, Cause of Action, Soel Rives LLP, and SSL Law Firm LLP filed suit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. The lawsuit was brought against the US Department of the Interior, the National Parks Service, NPS Director John Jarvis, and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

What does it mean for the Lunnys? As Kevin Lunny said recently, “We’re not going to walk away…We’re fighting for our community, our employees, and our family.”

For the community? It means a loss of sustainable, locally grown food source—one that supplies 40% of the oysters to bay-area restaurants. It also means the destruction of 30 jobs, the loss in potential profits from rising oyster costs as well as a widening gap in the local-food chain.

For the nation? If Salazar, like others in the president’s cabinet, can continue to break laws without repercussion, then you be the judge: what does that mean for our nation?

For more on the developments of the Lunnys story and Cause of Action’s part in the fight, check out our newsroom.

 

As of May 24, 2013, Cause of Action no longer represents Drakes Bay Oyster Company, the Lunny family, or Dr. Corey Goodman and will be withdrawing as counsel from the litigation.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: ,