Cambria Spring Co. v. City of Pico Rivera
| Decision Date | 05 September 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. B008660,B008660 |
| Citation | 171 Cal.App.3d 1080,217 Cal.Rptr. 772 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals |
| Parties | CAMBRIA SPRING COMPANY, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. CITY OF PICO RIVERA, et al., Defendants and Respondents. Civ. |
Simmons, Ritchie, Segal & Stark, and Graham A. Ritchie, Los Angeles, Samuel Siegel, City Atty., Lakewood, for defendants and respondents.
Plaintiff and appellant, Cambria Spring Company (Cambria), has appealed from a judgment entered after trial before the court, sitting without a jury, in favor of defendants and respondents, the City of Pico Rivera and its redevelopment agency (Pico Rivera).
Cambria complains that it was damaged by unreasonable conduct and delays occurring after adoption on December 23, 1974, of a redevelopment plan for the Whittier Boulevard area of Pico Rivera, which included the property on which Cambria operated a business manufacturing automotive and other springs. During the pendency of this action, Cambria filed chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and ceased its business operations, but it retained its real property.
On June 22, 1982, Cambria filed a complaint for inverse condemnation and precondemnation damages. The complaint alleged that various delays and unreasonable conduct by Pico Rivera after adoption of a redevelopment plan had rendered unmarketable, and caused a diminution in value of Cambria's real property, which consisted of 5.58 acres of land zoned for industrial use and improved with six buildings.
On July 28, 1982, Pico Rivera demurred to the complaint, on the ground that it failed to state a cause of action, alleging that the complaint showed on its face that the adoption of the redevelopment plan and other alleged actions of the city were insufficient to give rise to liability for inverse condemnation, and that Health and Safety Code section 33399, 1 which provides a method for the property owner to demand that the redevelopment agency acquire its property, was Cambria's exclusive remedy.
On August 20, 1982, the court overruled the demurrer as to the inverse condemnation action, stating that "a legal issue trial will determine if Defendant's actions constitute more than mere planning or resulted in unreasonable delay or other harmful or offensive conduct proximately causing damage to Plaintiff," and found that section 33399 does not limit the property owner's constitutional right to proceed by inverse condemnation. 2
Pico Rivera answered the complaint, and, after pretrial conference, an amended and supplemental complaint was filed, alleging that Cambria had begun chapter 11 proceedings on July 29, 1982, as a result of losses of rents, profits, and business goodwill resulting from Pico Rivera's redevelopment plan and delays in its implementation.
Pico Rivera moved to have the legal issues tried first, and if liability was found, then to have a trial on the question of damages. Accordingly, the court ordered the case tried in two phases, with the legal issues to be tried before the court, without a jury, and the issue of valuation and damages to be tried by a jury, if liability was found.
Trial of the legal issues commenced on February 14, 1984. Counsel stipulated, for this phase of the trial only, that some damages were proximately caused by Pico Rivera's conduct. This stipulation was intended to allow the court to reach the issue of whether Pico Rivera's conduct had given rise to liability in inverse condemnation and to reserve the question of the actual amount of damages for the jury.
On February 27, 1984, the court announced an extensive intended decision, finding that Pico Rivera was not liable to Cambria for inverse condemnation damages.
A nine-page statement of decision was filed, and judgment for defendants was entered on April 5, 1984. This appeal followed.
On December 23, 1974, Pico Rivera enacted city Ordinance No. 530, adopting a redevelopment plan, drawn up and approved by its redevelopment agency, pursuant to this state's Community Redevelopment Law ( § 33000 et seq.) and known as the "Redevelopment Plan for the Whittier Boulevard Redevelopment Project."
The ordinance and the plan contained the following provisions material to this action:
The Ordinance:
The Plan:
Participation Procedure:
After passage of the ordinance, the following events occurred pursuant to the plan:
In December, 1974, a copy of the ordinance, containing a legal description of the property in the project area, including the Cambria property, was recorded with the county recorder.
In 1978, the agency issued and sold tax allocation bonds in the amount of $6,720,000, to finance the project, including the acquisition of land within the project boundaries.
By application dated August 18, 1980, Pico Rivera sought an urban development acquisition grant (UDAG) from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for $4,372,000, to fund a 45-acre light industrial and business park as part of the redevelopment project, to begin February 1, 1981. Cambria's property was within this area.
In November 1980, Pico Rivera entered into a disposition and development agreement with Lewis Properties, Inc. (developer) to redevelop this industrial park. The agreement expressly provided that it was contingent on receipt of the UDAG, which by that time, had been sought in the increased amount of $7,725,028. The agreement could be terminated by either party if the UDAG was not obtained within six months.
When Pico Rivera first obtained preliminary approval of a UDAG for $4,519,700, it was made contingent on Pico Rivera increasing its contributions from $772,000 to $2,597,070. The City Council was concerned about getting the additional funds. Also, the developer raised numerous objections to the terms of the grant. Even after the grant was renegotiated, the developer and its financiers were not satisfied. Finally, the disposition and development agreement was terminated before the trial of this case.
The original UDAG application and disposition and development agreement had scheduled acquisition of the Cambria property for September 1981; then, in the ...
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...due process standards during this early stage redevelopment amendment proceeding. ( Cambria Spring Co. v. City of Pico Rivera (1985) 171 Cal.App.3d 1080, 1097–1098, 217 Cal.Rptr. 772 ( Cambria Spring Co.).) Accordingly, we affirm the judgment in part but reverse the grant of declaratory rel......
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