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Pacific Bell v. The City of San Diego6/13/2000
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of San Diego County, J. Michael Bollman, Judge. Reversed.
Plaintiff Pacific Bell's facility suffered substantial damage when a corroded cast iron water pipe servicing a fire hydrant burst and the escaping water flooded the facility. The pipe was owned and maintained by defendant The City of San Diego (City) and would not have burst had it not been corroded.
Pacific Bell sought inverse condemnation damages from City. Pacific Bell asserted that because City had no preventive maintenance plan to inspect or monitor the effect of corrosion on old cast iron pipes, burst pipes resulting in damage to adjoining private property was an inevitable consequence of City's water delivery system as designed, constructed and maintained.
There are two principle issues. First, do the immunities under the Tort Claims Act (Gov. Code, § 810 et seq.), including the so-called "fire hydrant" immunity (§ 850.4), bar an inverse condemnation claimant from recovering damages caused by a burst pipe providing water service to a fire hydrant? Second, if the Tort Claims Act immunities do not apply, under inverse condemnation principles is City strictly liable for damages caused by its bursting pipe or must the claimant establish City's unreasonable conduct?
City contends it is immune from liability for damage to Pacific Bell's facility because the gravamen of Pacific Bell's claim is City's negligent maintenance program, which must be prosecuted under the Tort Claims Act, and the fire hydrant immunity bars any claim against City under the Tort Claims Act. Pacific Bell contends the Tort Claims Act and its immunities do not apply to its inverse condemnation claim. Pacific Bell further argues that McMahan's of Santa Monica v. City of Santa Monica (1983) 146 Cal.App.3d 683 (McMahan's) is controlling and that under inverse condemnation City must pay for the damage without proof of fault. City contends McMahan's has been substantially undercut by a trio of California Supreme Court cases that replaced McMahan's inverse condemnation strict liability rule with a reasonableness rule under which a private party damaged by a public entity's water system must show the public entity acted unreasonably in constructing or maintaining the system.
I.
FACTS
A. The Deteriorating Pipes
The dispositive facts are undisputed. City's water delivery system has approximately 2,700 miles of pipes, about 180 miles of which are made of cast iron. The burst cast iron pipe that resulted in damage to Pacific Bell's facility was installed in 1958.
Cast iron pipes are subject to a corrosive process known as graphitization, in which the iron component of the pipe is leeched into the soil, leaving a brittle shell of graphite. Graphitization makes the pipe less able to withstand water pressure fluctuations and more susceptible to breakage. Because of the high number of graphitization-caused breaks in older cast iron pipes, City has concluded that all cast iron pipes in its system need to be replaced.
City has no program or method for testing or inspecting cast iron pipes to identify those needing immediate replacement. Instead, City learns a cast-iron pipe needs replacement only when it breaks. City replaces an old cast iron pipe if it breaks, or if there is a change of service, or in conjunction with replacing the water main to which it is attached.
In the 10-year period before 1997, the city council denied 28 requests for a water rate increase to fund City's water pipe repair and rehabilitation efforts, including replacing cast iron pipes. Under City's current schedule, it will take betwee
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