Couple sues Belvedere over $254K fine for delayed construction
- Kevin Hessel
- May 6
- 2 min read
A Belvedere couple has filed a federal lawsuit against the city, challenging a nearly quarter-million-dollar fine imposed after their “dream home” renovation project exceeded the city’s construction time limit by more than eight months.
Laurent and Marguerite Lefouet filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on April 25, alleging the $254,400 penalty violated their constitutional rights of due process and against excessive fines. The couple claims city officials’ own delays in processing permit revisions caused much of the project’s tardiness, yet they were still penalized.
“(The Lefouets) worked diligently to complete the project. But their project was repeatedly delayed by Belvedere’s lack of diligence in reviewing and approving project goals, which ultimately led to a failure to complete the project within the arbitrarily short 18-month deadline,” the lawsuit states.
The suit comes as Belvedere is already litigating another suit filed in Marin Superior Court in October 2022 by Golden Gate Avenue resident David Flaherty. He was hit with a $300,000 construction time-limit penalty after his home-renovation project took more than 4½ years to complete. That alleges the city miscalculated extensions for the 2017 Tubbs fire and the COVID-19 pandemic, also while asserting Belvedere unconstitutionally failed to provide due process and assessed excessive fines.
“This is basically a windfall for the city of Belvedere,” the Lefouets’ attorney, Greg Walston of San Francisco-based Walston Law Group, said in an interview, calling the fines an illegal raising of revenue untethered from the city’s actual costs or harm. “They’re getting $300,000 out of Mr. Flaherty. They’re getting $254,000 out of Mr. Lefouet. This is just going to the city coffer and being used for whatever they want it to.”
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