The judge found winemaker Jayson Woodbridge can’t show an injury since he hasn’t even applied for a well permit yet.
By Michael Gennaro, Courthouse News Service
A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by a lauded California winemaker after Napa County refused to issue permits for water wells on land he owns.
Plaintiff Jayson Woodbridge, founder and owner of Hundred Acre Wine Group and Double Vee Properties, says in his 2023 lawsuit that Napa County overstepped its authority and violated state water rights law by refusing to issue permits for water wells unless Woodbridge agrees to a strict limit on the water that could be drawn annually from each well.
Woodbridge says this restriction does not apply to existing wells, even though Woodbridge has the same legal right to use the water beneath his land as property owners with existing wells.
Specifically, Woodbridge wants to dig new wells within 1,500 feet of a river or stream and extract up to 1 acre-foot of water per acre from the proposed wells. The county’s regulations limit extractions from new wells to 0.3 acre-feet of water per acre annually.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Alex Tse wrote in a 5-page ruling that Woodbridge jumped the gun by suing before even pulling a permit for the wells, because Woodbridge believes Napa County will not approve the applications for reasons he believes are unconstitutional and inconsistent with California water law.
But until Woodbridge files permit applications and convinces Napa County that the wells won’t contribute to significant and unreasonable stream depletion, he has not pleaded a viable taking claim, Tse said.
“Plaintiffs’ takings claim is predicated on a different county regulation, which limits annual extractions from new wells to 0.3 acre-feet of water per acre. Plaintiffs believe that regulation impairs their water rights because extractions from neighboring wells, approved in years past, aren’t so limited: up to 1.0 acre-foot of water per acre can be extracted annually from these neighboring wells,” Tse wrote.
To prevail on that claim, Tse said Woodbridge would need to prove that any injury would not have occurred but for the challenged regulation, in this case the 0.3 acre rule. Tse wrote that Woodbridge’s claims fail because the 0.3 acre rule might not even kick in.
“If it turns out that plaintiffs’ wells will contribute to significant and unreasonable stream depletion, or cause other types of interference, the county might not allow plaintiffs to extract any water from these wells, let alone 0.3 acre-feet per acre. In that scenario, the 0.3 acre-feet rule — the only challenged rule — won’t be the reason why plaintiffs cannot extract 1.0 acre-foot of water per acre from their proposed wells,” Tse wrote.
“The challenged regulation, then, may not be a ‘but for’ cause of plaintiffs’ injury. Only after plaintiffs finalize their permit applications and the county makes a final decision on those applications will the parties, and the court, know whether plaintiffs have been harmed by the 0.3 acre-feet rule. Until then, plaintiffs’ takings claim won’t be ripe,” Tse wrote.
Woodbridge has until Oct. 16 to amend his claims, which Double Vee attorney Scott Slater indicated in an email they would do.
This isn’t Woodbridge’s first legal fight with Napa County. In 2022, Woodbridge filed a lawsuit claiming governmental overreach after the county attempted to force him to replant what he considered to be fire-prone trees after portions of one of his vineyards were burned in the 2020 Glass Fire.
Hundred Acre Wine Group has produced more perfectly scored wines than any other winemaker in the world. Forty-three wines have scored a perfect 100 from Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate and former Wine Advocate writer Jeb Dunnuck.
Napa County did not respond to requests for comment before press time.
