A claim that a contract for construction of a school violated public bidding requirements did not become moot after construction was completed because effective relief — in the form of disgorgement of public funds paid to the contractor — was still available in plaintiff’s taxpayer action. Davis v. Fresno Unified School District (Davis 2), No. F079811 (1st Dist., Nov. 24, 2020).
Public school construction contracts generally must be competitively bid under public bidding laws. The Fresno Unified School District sought to rely on an exception for contracts under which the school district leases out district-owned property in return for the lessee’s agreement to construct a building for the use of the school district. Such a “lease-leaseback” arrangement, if properly structured, is exempt from public bidding laws. In Davis v. Fresno Unified School Dist., 237 Cal.App.4th 261 (2015) (Davis 1), the court held that the District’s lease-leaseback arrangement for construction of a $36 million middle school did not qualify for the exemption because it did not create a true lease or include any financing component, both of which were essential statutory predicates to an exemption from public bidding laws. The court declared the construction contract invalid and sent the case back to the trial court for further proceedings. Our report on the case is available here.
On remand, the...
