Read the 11/15/17 Crown Castle vs. City of Piedmont Complaint. Crown Castle filed this complaint within 30 days of the five cell tower denials in order to meet the FCC 30-day limitation on filing an appeal for decisions made on 10/16/17. This action was filed in Federal Court before the City made decisions on the remaining four so-called “Small Cell” cell towers in Piedmont (all were approved). Both Crown Castle and the City of Piedmont were aware of the lawsuit during meetings held between 11/16/17 and 11/30/17, but neither Crown Castle nor the City of Piedmont disclosed this to the public during these meetings.
Crown Castle wants the judge to overturn the five denials and the conditional approvals on three cell towers without having to meet the conditions. Crown Castle would then be free to install noisy, ugly towers of any shape or size and block the sidewalk however they wanted & such as they one they installed for the AT&T tower on lower Grand Ave.
In one part, Crown Castle says that it is Piedmont’s fault that Crown could not fill out the applications completely, therefore, admitting that the applications were not complete!
When they say the City never disputed existence of a significant gap in Verizon coverage at these locations, they conveniently left out the Piedmont residents’ substantial evidence proving there is no significant gap in coverage for making Verizon calls and texts, which one can see in the following video that was entered into the public record. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T48d8JJg-3U
It’s time for Piedmont residents to make sure that the evidence already in the public record is used by the Piedmont City Attorney against Crown Castle.
The Case Was Assigned to Federal Magistrate Judge, Donna M. Ryu
Oakland Courthouse, Courtroom 4 – 3rd Floor
1301 Clay Street, Oakland, CA 94612
Ivy Garcia, 510-637-3639 Court Clerk
Valerie Kyono, 510-637-3537 Civic cases
- Judge Ryu Donna M. Ryu is a federal magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. She has served in this position since March 1, 2010, and her current term will expire on February 28, 2018. She joined the United District Court for the Northern District of California in 2010. She is Korean American, and is also the only LGBT judge in her district.
- Ryu started her legal career as an Associate at McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen in San Francisco, CA. She stayed there until 1988, before becoming an Associate at Saperstein, Seligman, Mayeda & Larkin in Oakland, CA until 1992. After leaving that firm, she worked as a sole practitioner, until founding Ryu, Dickey & Larkin in Oakland, CA in 1994. In 1998, she became an Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Women’s Employment Rights Clinic at the Golden Gate University Law School. In 2002, she left Golden Gate University to become a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings. She remained there until her 2010 judicial appointment
- Ryu graduated from Yale University, and received her law degree from U.C. Berkeley Law School.