Sixteen Years, Three Lawsuits, One Mile of Highway 101: Improvements are Coming, Finally?

In Bair v. Department of Transportation (“Bair II”), the First District Court of Appeal held that opponents of Caltrans’ proposed modifications to a one-mile stretch of Highway 101 through Richardson Grove State Park in Humbolt County could not continue relitigating their California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) claims following discharge of the original writ petition by the trial court.

Background

Litigation on this matter began in 2010 (Lotus v. Department of Transportation (2014) 223 Cal.App.4^th 645) with a challenge to Caltrans decision to approve improvements to a one-mile stretch of Highway 101 to accommodate truck travel and improve safety and operations of Highway 101. The appellate decision directed the trial court to issue a writ of mandate requiring Caltrans to correct deficiencies identified in the analysis for the project.

Following the Lotus decision, Caltrans completed additional review and analysis of the project under CEQA culminating in the preparation and circulation of an addendum to the original Environmental Impact Report (“EIR”) for the project.

In the second round of litigation (Bair v. Department of Transportation (Super. Ct. Humbolt County, 2019, No. CV170543) (“Bair I”) on this project, the trial court determined Caltrans made a procedural error in not circulating the addendum to the prior EIR for the project. Notably, a decision on the substantive claims made was not part of the trial court’s consideration.

Caltrans proceeded to circulate the addendum to the EIR and respond to public comments. In 2023, Caltrans again approved the project and certified the EIR and addendum. Following the EIR and addendum certification, Caltrans asked the trial court to discharge the writs issued in both the Lotus and Bair I cases. That motion to discharge was granted and none of the parties appealed that discharge decision.

At the same time that Caltrans filed its motion to discharge the writs, the project opponents filed the Bair II petition.

The Couty of Appeal’s Decision

The Court of Appeal, in describing the case history as a “15-year litigation odyssey that . . .is about as labyrinthine as the root systems of the redwood trees” draws a (possibly inadvertent) parallel between Odysseus’s journey home and the existing route of Highway 101 – long, circuitous and beset by detours. In the end, however, it was a procedural choice that dictates the Court’s decision.

In Bair II, petitioners argued the EIR addendum still failed CEQA because it did not use a legally adequate significance threshold when evaluating potential impacts to redwood trees. Petitioners further argued that Caltrans’ no-significant-impact conclusion was not supported by substantial evidence, particularly given the tree-rating methodology employed by the certified arborist who evaluated the potential impacts to the roots of the trees that may be impacted by the project.

At the Superior Court

The superior court rejected those arguments as barred by the discharge of the prior writs, and the Court of Appeal agreed. The panel held it did not need to decide whether Bair I itself had claim-preclusive effect, because the discharge of the Lotus writ alone conclusively established the addendum’s substantive adequacy. Once that discharge became final without an appeal, claim preclusion barred relitigation of the same CEQA adequacy challenge in the third action.

Importance of Precedent

The court’s discussion of precedent is likely the part of the opinion CEQA lawyers will cite most often. The panel relied heavily on Silverado Modjeska Recreation & Park Dist. v. County of Orange 197 Cal.App.4th 282 (2011), where a party that challenged a revised EIR in a second CEQA action was barred once the original writ proceeding ended in a discharge order.

By contrast, the court declined to follow Central Delta Water Agency v. Department of Water Resources 69 Cal.App.5th 170 (2021) to the extent the two cases conflict. In the First District’s view, Central Delta asked the wrong question by focusing on whether the revised EIR could have been litigated before entry of judgment in the first case. The correct question, the court said, is whether the revised CEQA document’s adequacy could have been adjudicated when the agency later sought discharge of the original writ. On that point, the court found Silverado “better reasoned.”

The panel also rejected petitioners’ effort to avoid preclusion by arguing that the Lotus discharge order was too summary, or too thinly supported by the record, to count as a merits determination. Looking to the whole record rather than the brevity of the ruling itself, the court concluded the adequacy of the Addendum was plainly the central issue in the return-to-writ proceedings. Petitioners themselves had argued below that discharge depended on whether the Addendum complied with CEQA “period.” In that setting, the court held, discharge necessarily resolved the CEQA adequacy issue. And if petitioners believed the trial court erred in discharging the Lotus writ, their remedy was straightforward: appeal the discharge order. They did not, and that failure proved fatal.

Conclusions and Implications

The practical lesson is clear. Bair II is a finality case for CEQA litigators. The First District Court of Appeal assumed without deciding that filing a new writ proceeding to challenge compliance with an earlier CEQA writ may be procedurally permissible. But it warned that pursuing parallel proceedings over the same revised CEQA document creates confusion and a classic “race to judgment.”

Here, petitioners lost the first case to reach finality and, in the court’s words, “lost the race.” For lawyers handling remand proceedings after a CEQA writ, Bair II underscores three points: treat return-to-writ proceedings as merits-critical; appeal a discharge order if you intend to preserve a challenge to the revised document; and think seriously about consolidation if related CEQA cases are proceeding on separate tracks. In the First District’s view, CEQA litigation cannot remain a perpetual loop, and in the case of this road, the loop has come to its end.

This article was originally published in the May 2026 edition of the California Land Use Law & Policy Reporter. It is posted here on our website with the permission of California Land Use Law & Policy Reporter, Argent Communications Group, Argent & Schuster, Inc., and the author, Kelly Black. All rights remain with the original publisher.

Kelly Black is a Director in Fennemore’s Land Use group. Her practice focuses primarily on land use, entitlement, and environmental regulatory issues for residential and commercial development projects in Southern California. She can be reached at kblack@fennemorelaw.com.