California Green City Backers Advance Landowner Legal Fight (1)

A company that bought property for a group of tech billionaires trying to build a sustainable city in northern California won a ruling advancing its lawsuit that accused landowners in the project’s target area of a conspiracy to drive up prices.

A federal judge in Sacramento denied a request by landowners to dismiss the suit by Flannery Associates LLC, the company behind the California Forever project, which carried out a multiyear secret land-buying spree in a semi-rural county northeast of San Francisco and ultimately acquired scores of parcels totaling about 62,000 acres.

Flannery said in November that it had acquired ...