Katz

Plaintiff Aaron L. Katz filed this action to invalidate an $85 parcel tax approved by voters in Campbell Union High School District (School District). The trial court dismissed the action because plaintiff had failed to publish a summons that conformed to the requirements of the validation statutes. (Code Civ. Proc., § 860 et seq.) Plaintiff appeals from the resulting judgment.

We conclude that the trial court correctly dismissed the action because plaintiff’s published summons did not specify a concrete date for response, the date calculable from the language of the summons did not provide the full amount of time required, and plaintiff did not demonstrate good cause for his failure to comply with these statutory requirements.

I. The Applicable Law

In order to place our discussion in context we begin with a summary of the applicable law. Under the validation statutes a public agency may seek a judicial determination of the validity of some matter, such as an ordinance, resolution, or other action taken by the agency. (§ 860.) If the agency does not seek validation within the time required, any “interested person” may file what is sometimes called a reverse validation…