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Pacific Bell v. The City of San Diego6/13/2000
p. 447-448.) City argues that Bunch's decision to replace the strict liability standard with a reasonableness standard overruled the entire line of cited cases, including McMahan's, applying the strict liability standard, and therefore in cases with factual patterns analogous to McMahan's an inverse condemnation claim must be evaluated under the reasonableness test.
Although Belair, Locklin and Bunch replaced the strict liability approach with a reasonableness requirement for flood control improvements, we do not perceive those cases to have overruled McMahan's. McMahan's did not involve a failure of a flood control improvement causing damage to a property that was historically subject to flooding. Furthermore, the ratio decendi of Belair, Locklin and Bunch does not support extension of the reasonableness standard here. The Belair, Locklin and Bunch approach was decided in the narrow and unique context of water law, and holds that neither the common law absolute immunity rule formerly applicable to damages caused by private flood protection measures, nor the strict liability rule applicable to damages caused by public improvements, appropriately balanced the competing interests.
In the present context, damages caused by failure of a private water pipe system would not have enjoyed absolute immunity at common law. More importantly, the concerns that animated the rejection of the strict liability rule in the context of public flood control projects has no counterpart here. Belair, Locklin and Bunch reasoned that strict liability for failure of a public flood control improvement would make the public entity an insurer against floods; the potentially enormous exposure could deter the public entity from building flood control projects and thereby deprive the public as a whole, including the damaged landowner, of protection against flooding. Because the landowner would suffer some flood damage in the absence of the flood control project or if the constructed project failed, the principle requiring compensation if the damaged landowner bore a disproportionate cost of the public benefit did not require a strict liability approach; instead, compensation was required only if the project exposed him to an unreasonable risk of harm. (Bunch, supra, at pp. 450-451.)
Unlike flood control improvements, the purpose of a water delivery system is not to protect against the very injury that its failure caused. Unlike flood control improvements, failure of the pipe here subjected Pacific Bell's facility to injury from flooding that was not a risk it was exposed to in the absence of the pipe. Thus, the private landowner damaged by failure of the pipe, if left uncompensated, is forced to contribute a disproportionate share of the public undertaking. Because damages caused by failure of a water delivery system do not resemble damages caused by failure of a flood control system, we conclude the Belair, Locklin and Bunch reasonableness test should not be extended to the facts of this case, and the ordinary rules of inverse condemnation strict liability for damages caused by public improvements are applicable.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is reversed. Respondent shall bear the costs of appeal.
CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION
McDONALD, J.
WE CONCUR: HUFFMAN, Acting P.J. & HALLER, J.
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