Judge overrules Redlands’ request to throw out Coyote Aviation case

San Bernardino Superior Judge Nicole Quintana Winter overruled the majority of Redlands’ request to disqualify Coyote Aviation’s lawsuit on June 11.

The aircraft storage company, which built a 16-bay aviation complex on the Redlands Municipal Airport, claims that the city is improperly exercising ownership over the complex after evicting the company in a legal dispute that started in 2020. Their suit is based on a term of the lease that said following the termination of the lease, Coyote Aviation would leave the property “with all of tenant’s improvements and alterations removed from the property.”

Coyote Aviation attempted to remove the hangars in 2023, but Redlands did not approve their demolition permit. The city now rents the hangars themselves.

“Defendants' actions in this matter constitute a blatant overreach of the limited authority granted to it by the court's ruling in the (eviction) matter,” Winter wrote.“The judgment was clear and unambiguous in specifying that the City was to be granted possession, not outright ownership. The City proceeded to conduct itself as the de facto owner of Plaintiffs' property. The City modified Plaintiffs' property, destroyed Plaintiffs' property, and started profiting from Plaintiffs' property. The City's actions represent a violation of Plaintiffs' rights as the legal owner.”

Redlands’ counsel asked Winter to throw out the case. In making her decision, Winter had to decide if the case had legal merit under the assumption that the complaint’s factual allegations were correct.

Redlands argued that it was too late to appeal the denial of the demolition permit, and that Coyote Aviation needed to prove they did everything they could to challenge the permit denial in order to have a case. 

Winter found that the city’s denial of the permit did result in an error—but an error made by the city, not the company.

“Defendants cannot intentionally frustrate Plaintiffs' performance under the contract and then use its own actions of frustrating Plaintiffs' performance under the contract as a sword against Plaintiffs later,” Winter wrote.

“As Plaintiffs' landlord, the City was required by law to allow Plaintiffs' to remove their property, and the City failed to do so,” she wrote further down.

She wrote that a basic element in breach of contract cases is whether a plaintiff had an excuse for nonperformance of a contract. Redlands’ denial of the permit constituted an excuse for Coyote Aviation, she found.

She also wrote that Coyote Aviation’s tenancy continued month-by-month as the litigation continued, meaning they would still have time to remove the hangar complex.

She still threw out Coyote Aviation’s causes of action for fraud. Coyote Aviation argued that the city had misled them. Public entities and their employees have statutory immunity from fraud charges unless the employee committed the fraud for personal gain or for personal malice, Winter wrote.

She also threw out the negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress causes of action. The factual allegations supporting those causes are too similar to the allegations supporting the breach of contract cause of action, she ruled.

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