Bunch v. Coachella Valley Water Dist.

• Decision Date: 08 May 1997
• Docket Number: No. S051966,S051966
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 935 P.2d 796, 97 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 3417, 97 Daily Journal D.A.R. 5940 Kenneth BUNCH et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. COACHELLA VALLEY WATER DISTRICT, Defendant and Respondent.

Page 89

63 Cal.Rptr.2d 89

15 Cal.4th 432, 935 P.2d 796, 97 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 3417,

97 Daily Journal D.A.R. 5940

Kenneth BUNCH et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. COACHELLA VALLEY WATER DISTRICT, Defendant and Respondent.

No. S051966.

Supreme Court of California.

May 8, 1997.

Oliver, Barr & Vose, Oliver, Vose, Sandifer, Murphy & Lee, Arthur J. Hazarabedian and James Duff Murphy, Los Angeles, for Plaintiffs and Appellants.

James S. Burling, Sacramento, Stephen E. Abraham, Gordon & Rees, Douglas B. Harvey, David Collins, San Francisco, Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard, Lloyd Hinkleman, Sacramento, Desmond, Miller & Desmond, Richard F. Desmond, Gary Livaich, Sacramento, Dopkins & Rolfe and William E. Dopkins, III, Sacramento, as Amici Curiae on behalf of Plaintiffs and Appellants.

Redwine and Sherrill, Justin M. McCarthy, Gerald D. Shoaf, Steven B. Abbott and Seth C. Thomspon, Riverside, for Defendant and Respondent.

Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General, Roderick E. Walston, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Jan S. Stevens, Assistant Attorney General, Richard M. Frank and David DeAlba, Deputy Attorneys General, Martha H. Lennihan, Sacramento, Baker, Manock & Jensen, Douglas B. Jensen, John L.B. Smith, William S. Barcus, Fresno, Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, Ellen J. Garber, San Francisco, Susannah T. French, Downey, Brand, Seymour & Rohwer, Thomas N. Cooper, Gordon B. Burns, Sacramento, Meyers, Nave, Riback, Silber & Wilson, Andrea J. Saltzman, David W. Skinner, Steven R. Meyers, San Leandro, Lepper, Schaefer & Harrrington and Gary M. Lepper, Walnut Creek, as Amici Curiae on behalf of Defendant and Respondent.

CHIN, Justice.

Article I, section 19 of the California Constitution (section 19) provides that when a public entity takes or damages property, it must pay the owner just compensation. (See, e.g., Locklin v. City of Lafayette (1994) 7 Cal.4th 327, 362, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 613, 867 P.2d 724 (Locklin ).) In Belair v. Riverside County Flood Control Dist. (1988) 47 Cal.3d 550, 253 Cal.Rptr. 693, 764 P.2d 1070 (Belair ), we held that when a public entity's design, construction, or maintenance of a flood control project poses an unreasonable risk of harm to property historically subject to flooding and causes substantial damage to it, the property owners may recover damages for inverse condemnation under section 19. (Belair, supra, 47 Cal.3d at pp. 564-567, 253 Cal.Rptr. 693, 764 P.2d 1070.) Belair concluded that, if the public entity acted unreasonably, compensation "constitutes no more than a reimbursement to the damaged property owners of their contribution of more than their [proportionate share to the public undertaking]." (Id. at p. 566, 253 Cal.Rptr. 693, 764 P.2d 1070.) The question here is whether, in the narrow and unique context of flood control litigation, Belair 's rule, as endorsed and refined by Locklin, supra, 7 Cal.4th 327, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 613, 867 P.2d 724, should apply when the public entity's efforts to divert water from a potentially dangerous natural course fail and cause property damage during a severe tropical storm. The Court of Appeal concluded the rule should apply.

We agree with the Court of Appeal and conclude that Belair' § reasonableness standard, as endorsed and refined by Locklin 's balancing principles (discussed below), should apply to flood control cases, including this one, where the failure of publicly managed flood control facilities causes property damage. ¹ The Coachella Valley Water District (the District) here maintained dikes and levees that sought to channel water safely away from a potentially dangerous natural flow. When a water project fails, as this one did, causing flood damage, the issue is whether the system's design, construction, and maintenance were reasonable. (Belair, supra, 47 Cal.3d at p. 565, 253 Cal.Rptr. 693, 764 P.2d 1070.) If the public entity's conduct is unreasonable and a substantial cause of damage, the entity "is liable only for the proportionate amount of damage caused by its actions." (Locklin, supra, 7 Cal.4th at p. 368, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 613, 867 P.2d 724.) This inverse condemnation rule invokes constitutional balancing principles and is not governed by tort concepts of fault or negligence. It requires a balancing of the public need for flood control against the gravity of harm caused by unnecessary damage to private property. (See Van Alstyne, Inverse Condemnation: Unintended Physical Damage (1969) 20 Hastings L.J. 431, 489-490 (Van Alstyne).) Based on this rule, the Court of Appeal correctly concluded the District is not liable for the flood damage to plaintiffs' property. ² We therefore affirm the Court of Appeal judgment.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The District, a state agency, possesses flood control powers within a defined area of the Coachella Valley, including Magnesia Springs Canyon and the City of Rancho Mirage. Magnesia Springs Canyon is a natural watercourse that drains a watershed of about five and one-quarter square miles in the mountains south of Rancho Mirage. (See San Gabriel Valley Country Club v. Los Angeles County (1920) 182 Cal. 392, 397, 188 P. 554 [defining "natural watercourse" as a channel with defined bed and banks used by water naturally passing down as a collected body].) The discharge from Magnesia Springs Canyon watershed flows north, passes over Magnesia Falls, and forms the Magnesia Cove alluvial plain as it spreads toward Rancho Mirage.

Beginning in 1948, in an attempt to protect property from historical flooding in Magnesia Springs Canyon, a private developer constructed flood control facilities on the Magnesia Cove alluvial plain to divert canyon floodwaters northwest into the West Magnesia Channel. The District has owned the facilities since 1966. They consisted of: (1) a training levee to move the apex of the alluvial fan (a fan-shaped accumulation of sediment) to the north; (2) a diversion dike to intercept the waters and divert them to the northwest side of the alluvial fan; and (3) a channel to carry the waters to the Whitewater River. Constructed of locally quarried, uncompacted, and unreinforced sand and soils, the flood control facilities successfully diverted and channeled storm runoff away from the Bunches' apartment building until a series of unusually severe tropical storms struck the area in 1976 (Kathleen), 1977 (Doreen), and 1979 (Dolores). According to the Bunches' experts, their property was located in the sheet-overflow area of the Magnesia Cove alluvial fan, an area subject to flooding before the flood control facilities were built.

In 1976, the flood control facilities failed during Tropical Storm Kathleen at or near the point where they were intended to divert the floodwaters' natural direction. Kathleen caused substantial damage throughout the entire Coachella Valley. Less than 2 percent of that damage, however, occurred on the Magnesia Cove and in Rancho Mirage. The storm did not damage the Bunches' property. Local runoff, not failure of the District's flood control facilities, caused the Rancho Mirage damage. From at least 1948 until Kathleen arrived, the facilities had successfully controlled all runoff from rain in the Magnesia Springs Canyon watershed.

In the wake of Kathleen--whose floods dug a 10-foot-wide breach in the works, through which water flowed 50 to 150 yards beyond--the District undertook emergency repairs using additional natural materials. The repaired facilities withstood the runoff that Tropical Storm Doreen produced in 1977. At that time, the District authorized Bechtel Corporation to conduct flood control studies in Palm Desert, Indian Wells, and Rancho Mirage. The study was in progress in July 1979, when Tropical Storm Dolores struck.

Dolores was the most severe tropical storm in the recorded history of that region of the state; it is sometimes called the "300-year flood." The floods Dolores caused overtopped the dike and levee at the point where the facilities were designed to divert the floodwaters, causing about $20 million in damage to the Magnesia Cove cities. Rains from Dolores led to the flooding of the Bunches' apartment building, which was inundated with water, mud, and debris flowing from the point of the breach in the flood control facilities in a concentrated manner and at an abnormally rapid rate of flow. A wall along the southerly property line collapsed, and mud and debris buried automobiles parked on and adjacent to the property. The Bunches' real property damage totaled $690,000.

In view of the damage Dolores caused, in November 1979, the United States Army Corps of Engineers agreed to participate in constructing flood control improvements. Their design, approval, and installation took nearly eight years to complete and cost the District about $7 million.

In 1982, the Bunches filed an inverse condemnation action against the District, seeking compensation for its physical invasion and destruction of their property. The court tried the liability issue, and a jury tried the damages issue. Applying then traditional standards of inverse condemnation, the trial court concluded the District was strictly liable for the Bunches' property damage, without regard to the reasonableness of its flood control measures, because the breach in its facilities was a substantial cause of the damage. (See Albers v. County of Los Angeles (1965) 62 Cal.2d 250, 257, 42 Cal.Rptr. 89, 398 P.2d 129 (Albers ) [government strictly liable for damage caused by public improvement as designed and constructed].)

The jury awarded the Bunches $690,000 in damages. The District appealed from the judgment; the Bunches appealed from the judgment with regard only to the interest calculation included as part of the damages award. While the appeals were pending, this court decided Belair, which addressed the liability issue in the context of flood control facilities designed to protect against the " 'common enemy' of floodwaters." (Belair, supra, 47...