Warden v. City of Los Angeles

Opinion

MOSK, J.

Plaintiff filed an action against the City of Los Angeles, alleging that he had suffered personal injuries and property damage when his sailboat struck a submerged sewer pipe constructed and maintained in Santa Monica Bay by the city. The trial court, sitting without a jury, found for plaintiff and awarded him damages in the amount of $6,416. On this appeal from the ensuing judgment, the primary issue is whether the city was negligent in failing to request the Coast Guard’s permission to install visible and audible aids to warn mariners of the hazard caused by the submerged pipe.

On June 24, 1967, plaintiff and several others were proceeding in the sailing yacht

Bandido

from San Francisco to Los Alamitos in heavy fog. Shortly after 2 a.m. the vessel struck the sewer pipe, which lay only 2.2

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feet below the surface at low tide. The Coast Guard was summoned and towed the disabled vessel to safety. The vicinity of the pipe was marked by two “red nun” buoys which were unlighted and had no audible signals. The pipe was not marked as an obstruction on the charts of Santa Monica Bay issued by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.

The pipe had been constructed by the city in 1949 as an outfall for the city’s Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant. Three other pipes, installed for the same purpose in 1925, 1957 and 1959, were submerged under the seabed, but the sewer pipe which caused the accident protruded into the waters of the bay. The federal government exercised jurisdiction over the navigable waters of the bay at the time the sewer pipe was installed, and the city was required to and did obtain its authorization for the installation. In connection with the construction, the city inquired of the Coast Guard whether it was advisable to provide a whistling buoy 'to warn mariners of the pipe. The Coast Guard specified the two unlighted and inaudible buoys, but added that when a nearby marina commenced operations, a lighted sound buoy might be required. The marina, located two miles from the sewer pipe, was constructed in 1965, and small boat traffic in the vicinity increased substantially. The city owned and maintained the buoys.