In Weiss v. People ex rel. Dept. of Transportation, published July 16, 2020, the California Supreme Court reversed a judgment entered in an inverse condemnation case after the trial court resolved liability issues on a motion made under Code of Civil Procedure section 1260.040. Property owners brought the action alleging that sound walls along the 5 Freeway deflected noise, dust, vibrations, and nighttime glare onto their properties. The defendant agencies demurred on the ground that the plaintiffs could not show that their properties sustained damage different from that sustained by neighboring properties. The trial court overruled the demurrer. Later in the action, the agencies asked the court to resolve the issue via section 1260.040. Section 1260.040 is part of the statutory procedure for eminent domain cases. It authorizes the court to make an early resolution of issues of evidence or law affecting compensation. The trial court resolved the issue in the agencies' favor, which disposed of the case.
The Supreme Court ruled that the trial court erred by importing the statutory eminent domain procedure into an inverse condemnation action. A trial court may, in certain circumstances, devise or borrow a procedure appropriate to the specific litigation before it. But it may not do so when an applicable procedure is provided by a statute or rule of court. Here, resolving liability under section 1260.040 supplanted resolution by summary judgment or adjudication, with all of the procedural protections inherent in that motion; and deprived the plaintiffs of the bench trial on inverse condemnation liability to which they would otherwise be entitled. Section 1260.040 was intended to assist resolution of eminent domain cases before trial, by giving the parties a way to resolve evidentiary and legal issues that would affect the amount of compensation before the final round of demands and offers required by the eminent domain procedure. It is not designed to be case determinative, since in eminent domain cases the public entity admits liability and the issue is the amount of compensation. By contrast, in inverse condemnation cases the plaintiff must prove liability. The section 1260.040 procedure is not appropriate for resolving liability in inverse condemnation cases.
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