No Coal in Oakland

On October 19, 2026, the City of Albany joined Richmond, Emeryville, and Berkeley as East Bay city governments close ranks against coal transport, handling, and storage of coal in our communities. Albany’s City Council passed Resolution 2026-77 unanimously, with one councilmember absent.

A half-dozen speakers addressed the City Council in support of the resolution. The youngest speaker gave this comment:

Hi, I’m Oliver from Cornell Elementary, and I believe we should be against the coal facility because doing this will cause climate change and damage our ecosystems and our health.

Other speakers included Albany residents Ben Eichenberg on behalf of San Francisco Baykeeper, Katy Vigil-McClanahan, Allie Johnson, Tom Athanasiou, and Lucinda Young speaking on behalf of the Albany Climate Action Coalition. The speakers in favor of the resolution can be viewed on a YouTube recording of the meeting, starting at 1:36:45.

In addition to opposing “transport of coal and petcoke through the city and through nearby cities … [and] the handling and storage of coal at the proposed OBOT facility in Oakland,” Albany’s resolution “urges the Air District to adopt measures that would strengthen regulation of coal and petcoke as components of fugitive dust” and “to ensure that any air permit it issues to the OBOT facility fully protects Oakland and other Bay Area workers and residents from exposure to dangerous coal and petcoke emissions.”

Albany also threw its support behind California’s newly enacted law, AB40, that requires a “full, up-to-date Environmental Impact Report under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)” in the course of evaluating any application for an air permit for the Oakland Bulk and Oversize Terminal (OBOT).

No Coal in Oakland thanks the City of Albany for its insistence on protecting the health and safety of all residents of the East Bay; and on opposing the mining, transport, and burning of coal that would add to our planet’s ongoing climate crises.

Albany’s Resolution 2026-77 can be accessed on the City of Albany website. Image: speakers on Resolution 2026-77 at the Albany City Council meeting of 2026-10-19. Clockwise from upper-left: Lucinda Young, Ben Eichenberg, Katy Vigil-McClanahan, and Allie Johnson. Credit: Zoom screenshots.

On September 30th, 2026, West Gateway sublessee Insight Terminal Solutions (ITS), owned by hedge fund mogul Jon Brooks, suffered a stinging defeat in its frivolous and forum-shopped bid to impose a claim for hundreds of millions of dollars on the City of Oakland.

US District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton issued his scolding decision in an 18-page ruling that laid out in exacting detail why ITS had no business filing its case in a Kentucky bankruptcy court. Judge Beaton ruled:

the absence of any identifiable pre-confirmation claim or post-confirmation distribution dooms the jurisdictional basis for ITS to return to bankruptcy court. This litigation doesn’t involve application of the Bankruptcy Code, the interpretation of the reorganization plan, or any potential effects on creditors….The only relevant nexus between this case and ITS’s bankruptcy is the one linking its current owners to a potential future recovery. And that does not suffice…. Even the expansive reach of related-to bankruptcy jurisdiction doesn’t stretch this far.

Judge Beaton then went on to make clear that if his decision were overruled on “related to” jurisdiction, he would nonetheless abstain from hearing the case, as “tort claims between a California-based plaintiff and a California municipality, involving alleged misconduct in California that violated California state law” ought to be litigated in a California court. In his discussion on the question of abstention, Judge Beaton wrote, “Particularly given the degree to which the state-law issues bear on sensitive questions of sovereignty and finality, however, principles of federalism and comity counsel deference to California courts.”

ITS filed notice on October 13, 2026 that it would nonetheless appeal the case to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The developers’ opening appeal brief will be filed in the coming months.

No Coal in Oakland’s Ted Franklin, in his October 6 analysis of Judge Beaton’s dismissal, wrote that – despite the narrow chance ITS has of prevailing in this case – they might choose to appeal or refile in California for “the nuisance value of holding formally unresolved claims over the City’s head.”

No Coal in Oakland continues to assume that’s the game the would-be coal developers are playing. It’s unfortunate that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals judges are being asked to direct their time and attention to a lawsuit that never should have been filed.

Image: Map of the Sixth Circuit United States Court of Appeals. Image credit: Marginal Cost, via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Ominous headlines appeared in The New York Times and other media last November. A Kentucky bankruptcy judge had issued a startling order holding the City of Oakland liable for up to $654 million in damages, before interest, for obstructing construction of a massive rail-to-ship coal export facility in West Oakland. 

That all changed last Wednesday, September 30, as a federal judge in Kentucky dismissed the “billion dollar” lawsuit brought by Insight Terminal Solutions (ITS) against the City of Oakland.

“A Stand Against Coal Exports Could Push Oakland, California Toward Bankruptcy,” led The New York Times in a November 2025 story reposted widely, including on page one of the East Bay’s aspirational paper of record, the East Bay Times (“Coal project costs mounting”).

“The New York Times parlayed a recent rogue judgment issued by a handpicked bankruptcy judge in Kentucky into a tale of the wolf knocking at Oakland’s door,” No Coal in Oakland wrote at the time. The City’s attorneys protested, as they had from the outset of the Kentucky litigation, that the bankruptcy judge had no authority to hear the case, much less issue a judgment against the City.

But the tale of Oakland’s impending doom took hold, leaving City officials unwilling to voice opposition to coal. However shaky the legal grounds for the gargantuan lawsuit in Kentucky, the threat of a catastrophic defeat in a strange court left many in Oakland uneasy. Muckrakers slung muck on substack (see East Bay Insiders Oakland Newsletter and Oakland Report). Developer Phil Tagami’s PR flack, Zennie Abraham, posted a video confidently entitled “City Of Oakland Owes Insight Terminal Solutions $678 Million In OBOT Breach-Of-Contract Case.” 

“We lost, lost, lost, and we continue to lose,” lamented Oakland city councilmember and developer ally Ken Houston, apparently convinced that the bankruptcy judge’s ruling would stand. 

A dark cloud hung over City Hall.

The substance of the ITS lawsuit was the shell company’s sole asset, its sublease to develop a 19-acre corner of the shuttered Oakland Army Base as a marine export terminal. ITS claimed that the City of Oakland committed tortious interference with its effort to develop a coal export facility on the site, near the foot of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. According to its complaint, the City owed ITS “not less than $1 billion,” plus interest, punitive damages, fees, and expenses.

But last Wednesday, United States District Judge Benjamin Beaton ruled that the City’s attorneys, led by Danielle Leonard of Altshuler Berzon LLP, got it right when they argued that the Kentucky bankruptcy court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to hear the case filed in early 2024. They insisted from the outset that the case involved California parties in a dispute governed entirely by California law and should be heard, if at all, in a California courtroom.

In his order of dismissal, Judge Beaton agreed, pointedly adding that “ITS’s decision to file an adversary proceeding in Kentucky, rather than to sue in the California courts, carries at least a whiff of forum shopping.” No Coal in Oakland made the same call nearly two years ago.

ITS chose the Kentucky forum to launch its “billion dollar” lawsuit after a California trial judge denied a $159.6 million claim brought by developer Phil Tagami in Alameda County. In 2018, the City terminated Tagami’s lease for failure to get terminal construction underway by deadlines set in the lease. This effectively rendered ITS’s sublease, executed weeks before the City’s termination of Tagami’s lease, worthless as well. 

Although Alameda County Superior Court Judge Noël Wise ruled the City’s termination of the lease unlawful and reinstated the lease in early 2024, she rejected the mega damages sought by the developer as too speculative to be awarded under California law.

ITS, which had funded Tagami’s case in California, decided to take another shot at an unearned payday in front of the Kentucky bankruptcy court judge who had presided over ITS’s reorganization in 2021. ITS emerged from bankruptcy under new ownership by Autumn Wind Lending, a shell company owned by Los Angeles hedge fund operator Jon Brooks.

The bankruptcy case was fully resolved when Autumn Wind acquired ITS. The shell company’s attorneys nonetheless argued that ITS’s claim against the City was sufficiently “related to” the 2021 case to provide the Kentucky bankruptcy court with jurisdiction. Brooks’ lawyers tried but failed to bluster past the glaring fault in their argument that the issues they were trying to litigate could have been, but weren’t, raised by ITS or Autumn Wind Lending during the earlier proceeding.

After quoting the late Justice Antonin Scalia (“as many a curbstone philosopher has observed, everything is related to everything else”), Judge Beaton found no significant connection between the bankruptcy case and ITS’s 2024 lawsuit. He ruled that

the absence of any identifiable pre-confirmation claim or post-confirmation distribution dooms the jurisdictional basis for ITS to return to bankruptcy court. This litigation doesn’t involve application of the Bankruptcy Code, the interpretation of the reorganization plan, or any potential effects on creditors….The only relevant nexus between this case and ITS’s bankruptcy is the one linking its current owners to a potential future recovery. And that does not suffice…. Even the expansive reach of related-to bankruptcy jurisdiction doesn’t stretch this far.

The practical result of Beaton’s decision is that this litigation, after years in Kentucky federal courts, is almost certainly over in any forum that matters. ITS can refile its claims in California or appeal Judge Beaton’s decision to the Sixth Circuit, but neither approach is likely to lead to a different result.

California may provide a six-month window to refile in state court, but that window opens onto a limitations question ITS is unlikely to survive. The City cancelled Tagami’s lease and, effectively, rendered ITS’s sublease worthless in 2018. The business torts raised by ITS have a two-year statute of limitations so they became untimely long before ITS filed in Kentucky. Even if ITS could survive the limitations issue, the City has raised a number of other credible alternative grounds for summary judgment in its favor.  The City need only win on one argument; ITS would have to prevail on all of them to survive a summary judgment motion in state court.

In the event of a successful appeal of last week’s ruling to the Sixth Circuit, the case would land back before Judge Beaton. He made it clear in his opinion that, if the appeals court were to overrule him on “related to” jurisdiction, he would nonetheless abstain from hearing the case, either dismissing it again or leaving it in limbo. 

Abstention is a nonreviewable determination that a case is in the wrong court even though, technically speaking, the court has jurisdiction. Abstention is rarely invoked, but Judge Beaton included in his decision a detailed analysis, tallying up ten reasons no federal court in Kentucky should be handling the case.  

“This case cried out for the exercise of discretionary abstention by the federal courts in favor of California litigation,” he concluded, sending a message to both ITS and the forum-shopped bankruptcy judge who hung on to the case for nearly two years.

ITS now faces an unappetizing choice between investing further resources in a California refiling that is likely to fail at the threshold or an appeal that leads nowhere. ITS may choose to plow ahead along one of these paths just for the nuisance value of holding formally unresolved claims over the City’s head, but the bell has rung and ITS has lost this round, if not the entire bout.

With victories in Alameda County and Kentucky, the City is now 2-0 against the developers’ suits for damages.

The decision is Insight Terminal Solutions, LLC v. City of Oakland, No. 3:25-cv-00023-BJB (W.D. Ky. Sept. 30, 2026) Opinion & Order of Dismissal.

Photo at top: Musicians Action Group bringing musical energy to kick off June 2016 No Coal rally outside Oakland City Hall.  Credit: Brooke Anderson

Nina Singh-Hudson, Oakland Dodges $1 Billion Coal Terminal Lawsuit as Federal Judge Tosses Case, Hoodline (Oct 2, 2026) 

Eli Wolfe, Coal company’s $1 billion lawsuit against Oakland dismissed, Oaklandside (Oct 2, 2026)

Israr Ahmad, Insight Terminal Solutions’ $1 Billion Lawsuit Against the City of Oakland Dismissed, What the Federal Court Actually Decided, All About Lawyer (Oct 3, 2026)

Juan Carlos Lara, Newsom Signs Coal Terminal Law as Oakland Wins Key Court Fight, KQED (Oct 4, 2026)