Court Upholds Denial of Damages for Airport Noise

The state Supreme Court has refused to overturn an appeal court decision denying homeowners near Burbank Airport the right to collect damages for emotional distress or property damage caused by aircraft noise, airport officials announced Monday.

The high court ruling leaves 600 plaintiffs from Burbank, North Hollywood and Sunland with “no more avenues of appeal that we can see” in the 7-year-old case, said Erich Luschei, attorney for the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority.

Supreme Court justices gave no reason for refusing to reopen the case, said airport spokesman Victor J. Gill.

In May, the plaintiffs’ attorney, John J. Schimmenti, expressed little hope that the state high court would take up the appeal but said that he would try nonetheless.

He was not available for comment Monday.

In the suit, plaintiffs contended that planes using the airport inflict noise on their houses, lowering their property values.

They argued that this amounted to “inverse condemnation”--the practical equivalent of a government agency taking away property by condemning it, and that they should be compensated.

But attorneys for the airport convinced a trial judge in 1988 that noise from the airport peaked in 1973 and has since declined as a result of the introduction of quieter jets.

Superior Court Judge Robert I. Weil ruled that, under state law, homeowners could not file suit after 1978, five years from the point at which noise reached its highest level.

Most of the cases were filed in 1983, five years after the authority bought the airport from Lockheed Corp. and a decade after the noise peaked.

Weil further ruled that, since the cases were not filed within the prescribed time, the airport had acquired a “prescriptive avigation easement”--a permanent right to continue flying over the affected properties.

In May, a state Court of Appeal in Los Angeles upheld Weil’s ruling that denied property damages and also found for the airport on the lesser issue of emotional damages.

Weil had ruled that the handful of plaintiffs who live close to the airport in an area where noise levels exceed state standards could sue for personal injury.

However, the appeal court ruled that, since the airport had acquired avigation easements, it “cannot thereafter be required to compensate the plaintiffs for its use of the easement.”

Luschei said that the next step will be a hearing before Weil, probably in October, at which the authority will request the dismissal of all claims.

He said the authority, as part of a cross complaint, will ask Weil to order that “a declaration of the airport’s right to continue operating at its historical, or highest known, noise level” be recorded on the title of each of the nearly 300 properties owned by plaintiffs.