City of San Jose gears up to sue Larry Ellison

The City of San Jose is gearing up to sue Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive, alleging that he is breaking curfews when landing his private jet late at night at the local airport.

Although a Curfew Monitoring Committee meeting this week recommended that a lawsuit should be filed by the city's lawyers as quickly as possible, San Jose can expect a fight on its hands from the feisty billionaire, who has previously said he would sue the city for the right to fly in whenever he wanted.

For the last two years, Ellison has allegedly ignored an 11.30pm to 6.30am curfew and has landed his Gulfstream Aerospace G-5 jet at San Jose International Airport. The most recent occurance, however, was earlier this month when he apparently landed after 1am - an event that provoked the Committee to take action.

Bill Hughes, San Jose's deputy city attorney, said on Tuesday that he had not yet decided when to file the suit, but felt that such action was the only way to have Ellison comply with local regulations.

San Jose claims that Ellison's plane is of commercial size because it can weigh more than 75,000 pounds at takeoff due to onboard fuel, which is the curfew limit.

Ellison, on the other hand, attests that his new $38 million plane is, in fact, quieter than older and smaller planes that can land at any time and his lawyers argue that not only weight, but also noise should be a factor when establishing curfew limits.

As a result, they have come up with a compromise, saying they are prepared to certify that Ellison would not fill the Gulfstream's fuel tanks to its 90,500 pounds capacity. This would enable it to fall within curfew guidelines.

But San Jose is against any compromise, attesting that the door could be opened to the commercial landing of Boeing 737 jets at the airport.

Ellison has not endeared himself to city officials, however, by generally ignoring their complaints and issuing statements such as: "San Jose has no right to tell me when I can land my airplane. It's like saying people who weigh more than 200 pounds can't go into a store after 6pm".

Ellison did not attend this week's Curfew Monitoring Committee meeting and Oracle did return calls on Tuesday to comment on the upcoming lawsuit.