Pasadena, California, in addition to loving roses, apparently loves trees.
The city owns 60,000 street trees, and as the City Arborist testified in City of Pasadena v. Superior Court, No. B255800 (Aug. 14, 2014), "the City catalogued these trees in a database, that he 'headed an urban tree maintenance program,' and that '[t]he City strives to enhance the quality of life through the promotion, protection, and balanced management of ... trees.'" Slip op. at 9.
One day, however, one of those trees fell on the home insured by Mercury Casualty Company.
Mercury paid the homeowner, then looked to the City for damages in subrogation, asserting nuisance and inverse condemnation. Under California law, inverse condemnation liability arises when property is injured by a public project or improvement in which the defendant substantially planned, approved, constructed, or operated. As the court noted:
The sole issue here is whether the City’s public tree, as part of the City’s forestry program, constitutes a public improvement such that it could provide the basis for an inverse condemnation claim.
Slip op. at 6.
The city asserted that its tree was not part of a public improvement "because trees are not 'deliberately designed and constructed,'" an argument the court rejected. Slip op. at 9. The city's forestry program was deliberate governmental action and served a public purpose, so the city could be on the hook for inverse liability, and was not entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Slip op. at 10.
Seems about right to us.
City of Pasadena v. Superior Court, No.B254800 (Cal. App. Aug. 14, 2015)
