Los Angeles Athletic Club v. City of Santa Monica

PETERS, P. J.

The Los Angeles Athletic Club instituted this action against the city of Santa Monica for damages for

[796]

the alleged injury to its real properties caused by the building of a breakwater by the city in the harbor. The action arose out of the construction of the same breakwater discussed in

Carpenter

v.

City of Santa Monica,

Civ. 11986, this day decided

(ante,

p. 772 [147 P.2d 964]). Most of the legal problems involved are identical with those discussed in that case. As was done in the Carpenter case, the parties stipulated that the issue as to liability should be tried separately from the issue of damages, this last issue to be tried only in the event it was held there was liability. Inasmuch as the trial court determined that the city was not liable for the alleged damage, the issue as to the amount thereof was not tried. There is, however, one factual distinction between the two eases. In the Carpenter case,

supra,

the appellant complained of erosion caused by the

breakwater;

in the instant case the appellant complains that its beach properties were rendered less valuable by accretions caused by the breakwater.

The appellants, in 1929 and 1930, acquired two beach club properties within the city limits of Santa Monica, one known as the Santa Monica Athletic Club and the other as the Santa Monica Deauville Club. These properties are about 550 feet apart, and each has been improved with a beach club building and equipment, and each is used as a single beach club enterprise. The seaward boundary of each parcel is the mean high tide line of the Pacific Ocean. A survey of the shore line had been made by the city engineer of Santa Monica in 1921. For the purpose of determining liability it was stipulated that the line of mean high tide as established by that survey was the mean high tide line as of 1921, and was the seaward boundary of the appellant’s properties as of that date. The evidence shows, and the court found, that in 1911 or 1912 there was constructed, about 250 feet southeasterly of the Deauville property, a municipal pier, 30 feet wide, and extending into the ocean. Adjacent to this pier on the southeast side is a privately owned pier known as the “Pleasure Pier,” which is 300 feet wide, and which extends into the ocean for a considerable distance. Between 1921 and prior to July, 1933 (the last date being when construction of the breakwater commenced), these two piers, together with certain concrete debris dumped into the ocean when the municipal pier was rebuilt, so interfered with the littoral drift that it caused accretions to attach themselves to appellant’s properties seaward of the 1921 line. These accretions, so