Angry Plaintiffs Fume Over Ban on Airport Noise Damage Suits

Susan Hardy spent Thursday morning in a bad mood.

Hardy, 42, a commercial artist, was one of about 400 San Fernando Valley residents who learned that their chances of collecting on noise-damage lawsuits against Burbank Airport have been effectively obliterated.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert I. Weil ruled Wednesday that owners of homes around Burbank Airport cannot sue the facility for property damage caused by airplane noise. The decision held that substantial noise impacts on surrounding residential neighborhoods existed long before 1983, when most of the lawsuits were filed, and that it was too late for the plaintiffs to sue.

“I just feel furious, like I’ve been betrayed,” Hardy said. “I feel powerless. I read about this in the paper and thought, ‘Oh, criminies, here we go again.”

Hardy and her husband, Eugene, were among a group of 24 homeowners and residents who were chosen as a representative sample of the hundreds of plaintiffs who had filed property damage suits against the airport. The judge’s ruling appeared to wipe out all the cases. Attorneys for both sides said that if the remaining plaintiffs pursued their cases, they would be rejected on the same grounds.

Plans to Appeal

John J. Schimmenti, attorney for the homeowners, said he will appeal the ruling.

Schimmenti and attorneys for the airport agreed that the ruling does not give the airport clearance for an uncontrolled increase in flights. They said a dramatic increase in noise could give residents the right to sue for noise damage again.

Several other plaintiffs contacted Thursday said they were unaware of Weil’s ruling or were waiting to hear from Schimmenti before deciding what to do next.

But most expressed disappointment or anger with the ruling, calling the noise an unbearable nuisance, and added that the ruling will clear the way for increased flights over their homes.

Options Uncertain

“It’s really a crock,” Yolanda McGinnis, 64, said after reading of the decision early Thursday. “It’s really unfair. I don’t know what my options are or what the lawyers are going to do. But big business talks. Who really gives a damn about the people?”

Most of the lawsuits were filed more than five years after the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority bought the airport from the Lockheed aircraft manufacturing company.

The judge agreed with airport attorneys’ arguments that if the airport had been sending aircraft over homes for more than five years without complaint, it had acquired the right to continue doing so.

“We didn’t sue before because we always thought the noise would get better, but it just got worse,” McGinnis said.

The ruling gave a boost to plans for a new terminal at Burbank Airport that could handle 7.3 million passengers annually by the year 2000, more than double the airport’s present traffic load. Airport officials said the ruling erased some of the legal uncertainty that may have prevented the airport from getting favorable interest rates on bonds to finance the terminal.

“I just think the whole east end of the Valley is going to suffer more and more,” said Eugene Hardy, 52. “With the volume they’re projecting at the new airport, it’s just going to get worse and worse.”

Although homeowners have no present legal recourse to complain about property damage due to aircraft noise, attorneys for homeowners and the airport disputed arguments that operations would increase unabated as a result of the ruling.

“If there was a substantial increase or change in the amount of noise” that caused a drop in property values, then new lawsuits could be filed, Schimmenti said.

Richard K. Simon, an attorney for the airport, agreed. “This was not a grant of carte blanche for the airport to grow to any size or conduct operations in any manner,” Simon said.

But Simon added that “the issue of whether in the future the airport could run into trouble is irrelevant in this case. I can’t speculate on where the airport would start to run into trouble, or others can’t really do so wisely.”

He said noise from aircraft is not likely to increase significantly, even with a new terminal.

“The noise will either get better or stay at the same level it is, as far as I can reasonably predict,” Simon said. “There would have to be an extraordinary or dramatic change in noise for there to be a new cause for action.”

He said the number of flight operations is determined by “the national and regional economy, and the building of a new terminal will not change that one iota. Airlines are not going to run empty planes to second-class locations.”