Lodi

Citizens for Open Government (Citizens), a nonprofit group, filed a petition for writ of mandate against the City of Lodi and Lodi City Council (together the City) challenging its certification of a final environmental impact report (FEIR) and approval of a use permit for the Lodi Shopping Center, which has as its proposed anchor tenant a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Citizens alleged the City’s actions violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). (Pub. Resources Code, § 21000 et seq.) The trial court granted the City’s motion to dismiss the petition based on Citizens’ failure to exhaust administrative remedies or lack of standing. Citizens appeals the judgment of dismissal claiming its representatives appeared and objected to the City’s proposed actions at each of the hearings before the planning commission and each of the hearings before the city council thereby exhausting Citizens’ available administrative remedies even though Citizens did not itself file the notice of appeal that brought the decision of the planning commission to the city council. We agree and shall reverse the judgment of dismissal.

BACKGROUND

In 2002, Browman Development Co., real party in…