In Cox v. City of Oakland, the Supreme Court today interprets the Subdivision Map Act as applied to an old land conveyance of multiple lots.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero holds the description of different lots in a single 1944 conveyance didn’t give separate legal status to each lot despite the conveyance occurring before a 1972 statutory change that now requires local government approval of subdivisions of land into even a small number of lots. “[A] conveyance does not ‘create[ ]’ multiple parcels [under the Act] merely by referring separately to lots of the contiguous property being conveyed,” the court concludes. Instead, the pre-1972 conveyance must have “alienate[d] one portion of an original parcel, . . . creat[ing] a single new parcel comprised of the conveyed portion of property.”
The court says its “interpretation . . . advances the Act’s goals of encouraging orderly community development and preventing undue burdens on the public.”
The court reverses the First District, Division One, belatedly published opinion.