Arques v. State

DRAPER, P. J. Although several defendants were sued, this case went to the jury as an action in inverse condemnation against the state only. The jury returned a special verdict answering “no” to the question “Was the real property of the plaintiff . . . damaged by the defendant State of Cali[256]fornia for a public use?”, and returned a general verdict for defendant. Plaintiff appeals from the judgment then entered.

Plaintiff owned some 22 acres of land along the Sausalito waterfront and extending some distance easterly below the waters of San Francisco Bay. The property was used for ship building purposes (Marinship) during World War II, and its 14 acres of submerged land included slipways and a channel leading to a turning basin. To the west of plaintiff's land, foothills rise sharply, constituting a watershed of some 156 acres, which drains into the bay over Ms property. The Waldo approach to the Golden Gate Bridge crosses this watershed. Built in 1937, this portion of Highway 101 was widened and improved by contract under which work began in the fall of 1953 and continued to March 22, 1955. In the course of such work, additional cuts and fills were made along the Waldo grade. In the winter of 1955-1956 rainfall was heavy. Plaintiff asserts that as a result of the highway improvement work and the loose earth left by it, erosion was much greater than normal, so that some 20,000 cubic yards of material were carried into plaintiff’s submerged land. He asserts that, when saturated in the bay, the volume of this deposit increased to some 40,000 cubic yards and destroyed the usefulness of his property for ship repair and salvage operations.

The state concedes that there has been a substantial decrease in depth of water over plaintiff’s submerged land, but asserts that it does not result from deposit of material from the highway cuts and fills.

Plaintiff asserts insufficiency of the evidence to support the verdicts. There is testimony to support his view that the construction work caused filling of his land. But there is direct evidence that the raw land left by the construction work was little eroded after the rains, and that the total loss of earth from such slopes, even if all of it reached plaintiff’s land, could cause no damage. The jury visited the scene and viewed the slopes. There is also evidence that the filling of plaintiff’s submerged land resulted from “shoaling” of the floor of the bay, a condition which witnesses testified was constant and was unrelated to runoff of material from the watershed. Plaintiff’s argument amounts to no more than an appeal to this court to review the evidence and redetermine its weight. It would be an act of supererogation to cite authority for the well-established rule that this function is for the trial court, whose determination binds us when, as in this case, it is supported by substantial evidence.