Neighboring city brought public nuisance action against city, alleging that city ordinance limiting commercial and heavy truck traffic through the city to certain major arteries caused extra traffic to travel through neighboring city and resulted in adverse consequences.
The Superior Court, Los Angeles County, sustained city’s demurrer without leave to amend, and neighboring city appealed.
The Court of Appeal held that:
- Courts assessing whether an alleged nuisance is a “necessary implication” of a statute’s express authorization, and thus whether statutory public nuisance immunity applies, should ask whether the alleged nuisance is an inexorable and inescapable consequence that necessarily flows from the statutorily authorized act;
- City had statutory immunity from neighboring city’s public nuisance claims;
- Ordinance restricting traffic was not so unreasonable as to make void the delegation of regulatory authority to the city to enact such restrictions; and
- Ordinance was not invalid due to its failure to specifically exclude state and federal highways.
City had statutory immunity from neighboring city’s public nuisance claims stemming from adverse effects of heavy truck traffic diverted into neighboring city by virtue of city municipal ordinance limiting heavy truck traffic to certain streets in city; statutes delegated to city the authority to prohibit the use of a street by any commercial vehicle or by any vehicle exceeding a maximum gross weight limit and to prohibit the use of particular highways by certain vehicles, and adverse effects to neighboring city inexorably and inescapably flowed from those statutorily authorized actions.