§ 1263.720.Duty of Court Upon Determination that Hazardous Material Present Within Property

This section is the engine of the school-district hazardous-materials scheme. Any party to the proceeding can petition to have the court specially set a hearing on one question: whether hazardous material is present within the property being taken. That hearing has to happen -- the statute does not leave it to the court's discretion once a party asks.

If the court finds hazardous material present, four things follow. First, the court identifies the required action needed to address it, the probable cost of that action, and which party will be designated to carry it out. Second, the court appoints a trustee whose job is to monitor completion of that required action and to hold money set aside from what would otherwise be paid to the defendant. Third, the court transfers to that trustee the funds needed to cover the probable cost, drawn from money already deposited under Article 1 of Chapter 6 or under § 1268.110, or, when payment would otherwise go straight to the defendant, withheld from that payment before the balance goes out. A cap runs through all of this: the total transferred to the trustee cannot exceed 75 percent of the deposited probable compensation before judgment, or 75 percent of the property's fair market value as later determined, after judgment -- with true-up rules if the eventual fair-market-value finding comes in higher or lower than what was deposited. Fourth, the court sets up a procedure for the trustee to pay out the held funds, in one or more installments, to whoever is performing the required action, as portions of the work are completed; anything left over once the work is finished gets folded back into the case the same way the rest of the deposit is handled.

The trustee does not work for free, either -- subdivision (c) puts the trustee's actual and reasonable costs on the plaintiff.