C.A. 4th;
D069798

The Fourth Appellate District reversed a judgment. The court held that there is no requirement of exhaustion of administrative remedies for lawsuit challenging water district's methodology for calculating wastewater usage.

Eugene Plantier, Progressive Properties Incorporated, and Premium Development LLC all owned commercial property in Ramona. They paid the Ramona Municipal Water District for wastewater services. They sued the district for declaratory relief and refund of unlawful sewer service charges, alleging that the the district's method of determining the costs of sewer service based on each parcel's assigned “equivalent dwelling unit” (EDU) violated the “proportionally” provision of Cal. Const. art. XIII D §6(b)(3). They argued, among other things, that the district assigned EDU's arbitrarily and without regard to a property's actual wastewater use and to the proportional cost of providing that property's wastewater service.