WATER LAW

Smiland & Khachigian represents businesses, property owners, water users and entrepreneurs in private and public legal matters, with a particular emphasis on disputes relating to water rights, environmental affairs and land use matters. The firm’s practice includes counseling clients in local, state and federal government relations, including state and federal regulatory and legislative arenas. Its water practice is extensive and its transactions and cases have been substantial in scope.

The firm’s lawyers have represented landowners in acquisitions and dispositions of more than 150,000 irrigated acres in California ’s San Joaquin Valley. In every transaction, water rights were central elements of the negotiations. The firm’s lawyers conceived unique solutions to water disputes and to business opportunities, among them being one which resulted in a favorable multi-million-dollar settlement, another which elicited a $50,000,000 conditional offer of capitalization and another which generated $1,000,000 for a three month surface storage right.

The firm served successfully as co-counsel for a water district in a major one-person-one-vote case and in a case relating to the applicability of reclamation law’s 160-acre limit to the U.S. Army COE water projects, respectively, Salyer Land Co. v. TLBWSD, 410 U.S. 719 (1973) and U. S. v. Tulare Lake Land Co., 340 F. Supp 1185 (1972), reversed 535 F.2d 1903 (1976), vacated as moot 459 U. S. 1095 (1983). Members of the firm also served as appellate counsel to another water district in a state court action regarding the district’s water supply.

The firm handled important litigation against the federal government and Westlands Water District, the nations largest federal irrigation water contractor. At issue were water quantity rights, water rate rights and drainage service rights. Two threshold aspects of the case resulted in favorable published decisions: Barcellos and Wolfsen, Inc. v. Westlands Water District, 491 F. Supp 263 (1980) and Westlands Water District v. U. S., 700 F.2d 561 (1983). A 56-page stipulated judgment governing the rights and duties of the parties terminated the case and the firm’s clients received in excess of $40,000,000. In the late 1980s, the firm’s lawyers enabled a unique land ownership structure that allowed a client sell 23,000 acres of land for more than $20,000,000, and after the sale, to manage the property and generate substantial fees that otherwise the client would not have been able to do. The transaction survived numerous politically motivated attacks, including two General Accounting Office reviews.

Over approximately three years, the firm’s lawyers successfully defended misdirected congressional assaults on a client’s ownership of a large landholding. The firm also enjoyed successes in Sumner Peck et al. v. Bureau of Reclamation 823 F. Supp 715 (E.D. Cal 1993), Firebaugh Canal Co. v. United States 203 F.3d 568 (9th Cir. 2000), and U. S. v. Westlands Water District, Memorandum Decision, CV-F-89-172-OWW (E.D. Cal, 2001) each case being related to water rights affecting approximately 40,000 acres of land. In Sumner Peck, the court held that the U.S. Government is subject to money judgment for breach of contract in the same manner as a private individual. Firebaugh Canal affirmed the substantive rulings of Sumner Peck, holding that the government was required to construct water facilities it had contracted to build and that by not doing so, the government had acted unlawfully. U.S. v. Westlands vacated the courts own, earlier ruling and found the firm’s clients indeed enjoyed an enforceable right to water at a specified price for a specified period.

The firm lawyers have advised clients about water marketing strategies, groundwater rights, water transfer legislation and laws governing general and special water-related districts. They have also counseled clients regarding interstate water transfers, groundwater litigation and prescriptive rights. One member has served on three water district boards. Several members of the firm have participated extensively in administrative and legislative advocacy programs and succeeded in advancing and defeating initiatives and legislation and, in one case, obtaining a contested eight-figure disaster relief payment from the federal government.

Smiland & Khachigian is best known for providing efficient, creative and aggressive solutions to clients’ problems. In regard to its water practice, the firm tends to be much more conflict free than other water law firms in California.