Sf Dance School Can Seek Relocation Damages, High Court Rules

The state Supreme Court cleared the way for the nonprofit dance school at the San Francisco Presidio to seek damages for the losses it suffered by having to relocate when Caltrans demolished its building to make way for restructuring the Doyle Drive approach to the Golden Gate Bridge. The state Department of Transportation paid the Presidio Performing Arts Foundation $107,000 in 2011 for the property loss it sustained when the department seized and destroyed the building the foundation had leased from the Presidio Trust since 2003. A Superior Court judge refused to send the foundation’s claim of lost “business goodwill” to a jury, rejecting an economic analyst’s estimate of a $781,000 loss and finding that the foundation had failed to establish the worth of its goodwill before the relocation. [...] a state appeals court overturned that ruling in November, and the state’s high court unanimously denied review of Caltrans’ appeal Wednesday, allowing jurors to decide the value of the foundation’s losses. Foundation officials said they had to cancel their 2010 summer program, including a fundraising benefit, because of the impending demolition, and lost about half of their usual enrollment of 400 students. Economist Justin Regus testified that the foundation, which typically spent more than it took in each year, had an additional $62,500 shortfall in 2010-11, which he attributed entirely to lost goodwill from a lesser reputation and public esteem in its new headquarters.