Court Opinion

ID: 9749473
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:46:39.263838+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:49.733546
License: Public Domain

*69BAMATTRE-MANOUKIAN, Acting P. J.,
Concurring.—I agree with the result my colleagues reach. In particular I agree that, where a plaintiff seeks both an injunction and damages as remedies for a continuing nuisance, it is proper, in the interests of justice, to award damages for harm caused by continuation of the nuisance after the action is filed and until the nuisance is actually enjoined. But I would reach this conclusion by somewhat different reasoning.
The common law has long recognized, as a general rule, that although the facts constituting the plaintiff’s claim (or “cause of action”) must have occurred before his or her complaint is filed, the plaintiff should be entitled to recover damages for all harms resulting from the actionable facts, including harms resulting while the action is pending and even harms reasonably certain to occur in the future. (McCormick, Law of Damages (1935) § 13, p. 47.) Civil Code section 3283 codifies this well-established rule of damages.
Continuing nuisance presents a special situation. As explained and rationalized in several of the cases my colleagues have discussed, every repetition of a continuing nuisance is considered a separate wrong for which the person injured may bring a separate action. Where (as, for example, in Capogeannis v. Superior Court (1993) 12 Cal.App.4th 668 [15 Cal.Rptr.2d 796] and in Baker v. Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority (1985) 39 Cal.3d 862 [218 Cal.Rptr. 293, 705 P.2d 866]) an otherwise abatable nuisance cannot (for various reasons) be enjoined but will continue from day to day until otherwise abated, each day’s recurrence of the offensive condition will give rise to a new cause of action which will support a claim for that day’s harms. In theory it is possible that harm will result today from yesterday’s recurrence, but as a practical matter today’s recurrence will supersede any claim for harm which might otherwise be attributed to yesterday’s recurrence. In such circumstances, it may be said that Civil Code section 3283 is simply inapplicable because there will be no “detriment resulting” from yesterday’s recurrence “after the commencement” of today’s lawsuit thereon, and no detriment “in the future.” Where the nuisance will recur essentially automatically and the court cannot abate the nuisance by injunction and cannot thus avert the possibility of repetitive lawsuits, the rule stated in Baker and many other cases and texts makes sense: The plaintiff’s damages should be limited to harms suffered yesterday (and on previous days back through the period of the statute of limitations), and the plaintiff should be allowed to bring another lawsuit, later, for harms assertedly suffered today and tomorrow.
But “[t]his practice of remitting the plaintiff to a later suit for the continuance of harmful conduct after the commencement of the action and *70before the trial, while a logical application of the theory of successive rights of action for successive wrongs, has the obviously inconvenient result of increasing litigation over what may broadly be regarded as a single controversy.” (McCormick, Law of Damages, supra, § 13, p. 51.) Where the continuing nuisance can be enjoined and future lawsuits thus averted, a rule to permit courts to give complete relief in today’s lawsuit, notwithstanding the dry plausibility of the Baker rule in cases such as Baker and Capogeannis, is needed as a matter of sound judicial policy.
Such a rule has long been available in what was, historically, the equity jurisdiction. “In equity, when suits for injunction were brought to restrain the continuance of a nuisance or like continuing injury, this consideration of convenience prevailed. These courts, in order to terminate the entire controversy in one suit, will, in the injunction suit, give as an incident thereto compensation for the loss or injury already suffered, and, carrying out the same policy, will allow recovery for the harm or damage sustained through the continuance of the wrong down to the time of the final disposition of the case.” (McCormick, Law of Damages, supra, § 13, p. 51, fn. omitted; cf. Razzano v. Kent (1947) 78 Cal.App.2d 254, 263-264 [177 P.2d 612].) California has explicitly recognized “the duty of the trial court,” in the exercise of historically equitable jurisdiction, “to adjust the rights of the parties up to the time of the entry of judgment and to leave nothing open to further litigation” (Union Oil Co. v. Mutual Oil Co. (1937) 19 Cal.App.2d 409, 412 [65 P.2d 896]; cf. Union Oil Co. v. Reconstruction Oil Co. (1937) 20 Cal.App.2d 170, 183 [66 P.2d 1215]), and the trial court’s “power to make an award of damages that were purely incidental to the equitable relief originally sought” even in the absence of “a supplemental complaint alleging the existence of facts which occurred subsequent to the filing of the original complaint.” (Union Oil Co. v. Reconstruction Oil Co., supra, 20 Cal.App.2d at p. 184; cf. Hutcherson v. Alexander (1968) 264 Cal.App.2d 126, 136 [70 Cal.Rptr. 366, 38 A.L.R.3d 636]; Collins v. Sargent (1928) 89 Cal.App. 107, 112-116 [264 P. 776].)
The case before us provides a clear example of proper exercise of historically equitable jurisdiction to afford complete relief and thus to bring this dispute to closure.
The petition of appellant 33rd District Agricultural Association for review by the Supreme Court was denied January 18, 1996.