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City Will Pay $9 Million in Flooding Suit

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Times Staff Writer

The city of San Diego, settling another liability case that will further strain city finances, Wednesday agreed to pay $9 million to 17 families whose homes were flooded by rainwater that poured out of a city catch basin during a severe storm last year.

The out-of-court settlement, reached in a conference before Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell, calls for the city to pay the 62 plaintiffs within 60 days. The timetable will prompt budget juggling because the city fund designated for lawsuit payoffs, which started the fiscal year July 1 with $12 million, now contains only about $4 million, City Manager John Lockwood said.

“That’s $9 million out of city funds, and that means other things are going to have to be deferred,” Lockwood said. He said he will propose budget amendments, including the possibility of deferring capital improvement projects in next year’s budget, to the San Diego City Council at its Oct. 16 meeting.

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‘We’ve Got No Choice’

“It’s a real problem,” said Councilman Bob Filner, who represents the area. “We’re going to have to postpone some projects to do it. Nobody wants to, but we’ve got no choice.”

The settlement comes just two weeks after the city agreed to a record $9.5-million payment to a woman who left brain damaged and quadriplegic after her car was struck by a speeding police cruiser on New Year’s Day, 1988.

Because of the size of that judgment, the city arranged to pay $6.3 million during fiscal 1991, giving financial staffers the ability to budget that amount.

Under Wednesday’s settlement, the city will purchase 15 flood-damaged homes on Lauriston, Paxton and Elrose drives in south San Diego, valued at slightly more than $2 million, said Chief Deputy City Atty. Alan Sumption. The rest of the settlement is for personal property loss and emotional distress suffered by the plaintiffs--17 families and a corporation that had stored fabric in a garage at a home.

The plaintiffs will split the funds in an undisclosed arrangement, said Gary Elster, attorney for the plaintiffs. One more family not represented by Elster has a pending claim against the city.

The plaintiffs “suffered very bad emotional distress,” Elster said. “Their children had developed an intense fear of water. They were afraid every time it rained.”

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Catch Basin Was a Parking Lot

A Superior Court jury last month ruled that the city was liable for the flood damage because it had leased the catch basin as a parking lot to a trucking company, Elster said.

When a severe rainstorm hit on Feb. 2, 1988, water swept the trucks off the basin floor and truck parts clogged the basin drains and spillway, sending the overflow downhill toward the homes, Elster said.

The city had contended that the storm was a freak occurrence that only happens every 200 to 500 years and claimed it should not be held responsible for a deluge it could not have guarded against. City attorneys did not, however, defend the city property department’s decision to lease the huge basin as a parking lot to bring in revenue.

After losing the liability phase of the trial, the city settled out of court rather than face a second jury that would have determined the penalty, Sumption said.

Wednesday’s judgment is not the first against the city involving the area. In 1983, some of the same families won a $1.4-million out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit that contended that construction upstream of the South San Diego Industrial Park contributed to flooding of their homes. The same claim was made in the current lawsuit.

Filner said he has repeatedly called for construction of flood controls throughout the neighborhood, a low-lying area along a creek. Filner predicted further flooding if the city does not make improvements.

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“We’ve got to do it, because otherwise we’re going to have these big settlements every month,” Filner said.

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