A new lawsuit accuses San Diego city officials of wrongly claiming in years of budget documents that they had completed flood-control work in the Chollas Creek neighborhoods that would later be badly damaged when it flooded in January.
The latest litigation stemming from the sudden winter flooding also accuses San Diego officials of diverting more than $15 million from such projects in order to pay off the lease for the uninhabitable high-rise at 101 Ash St.
“The city engaged in deceptive practices by issuing reports that made it appear that it was engaged in maintenance projects in the Chollas Creek flood-prevention infrastructure when in fact those projects were delayed for years and still are uncompleted,” the legal complaint says.
“In other instances, projects were paused to divert funding for storm-prevention infrastructure to purchase a building the city of San Diego was unable to use,” it adds.
City officials have said the short-term borrowing plan did not delay any projects, because the money was backfilled later in the fiscal year with new bond revenue.
The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed by a group of high-profile lawyers, including the former elected San Diego city attorney Michael Aguirre and his law partner, former chief deputy city attorney Maria Severson.
Aguirre and Severson are ed in the case by four lawyers from Gomez Trial Attorneys, the plaintiffs’ firm established by former federal prosecutor John Gomez.
“What we are trying to accomplish is to hold the city able for all of the harm it caused to the citizens of San Diego,” Gomez said. “What we’d like to see is a fix. We don’t want to be back in court in four or five years.”
The attorneys and a handful of flood victims were scheduled to hold a press conference Thursday afternoon to announce the complaint, which was filed in San Diego Superior Court last week but only became visible on the public docket Wednesday.
All told, the suit includes more than two dozen named plaintiffs, each of them property owners or residents in the communities surrounding the vast Chollas Creek watershed, which encomes hundreds of square miles from La Mesa and Paradise Hills to San Diego Bay.
The City Attorney’s Office, which is responsible for defending the city in civil litigation, did not respond to a request for comment. The office generally does not comment on pending litigation.
But city officials already have acknowledged a serious back flood-control efforts. In a report earlier this year, the city identified some $9 billion in upgrades to the city’s infrastructure that are needed, especially to its stormwater system.
“Age, combined with deferred maintenance due to historic underfunding of the storm drain system, poses a risk of flooding and catastrophic failure,” the five-year capital-improvement plan said. “This is evident from the number of emergency drainage repairs that have occurred over the last three rainy seasons.”
The class-action filing is the second such lawsuit filed this month.
Hundreds of residents and business owners sued the city on May 5, accusing it of negligently allowing Chollas Creek and other San Diego neighborhoods to flood by failing to properly manage its stormwater systems.
It’s not yet clear whether or how the two lawsuits might be combined. Aguirre said the class-action case could eventually be consolidated with other lawsuits making similar claims.
“We’re doing what we can to unite all the lawyers at the table and resolve the issues as a class,” he said. “This creates a forum to do that.”
He said he wants to see victims compensated for their losses and the city do a better job maintaining the flood-control channels developed to manage the Chollas Creek runoff.
“We have to do both,” Aguirre said. “We have to have enough money to repair the homes and restore them to what they were, and also put reasonable plans in place to make sure we don’t have these catastrophic problems in the future.”
The latest case was filed by 25 plaintiffs whose property was destroyed or severely damaged in the flood.
The 39-page complaint cites four causes of action: negligence; maintaining public property in a dangerous condition; inverse condemnation, arguing the city’s failure to act led to an illegal taking of property; and private nuisance, the legal theory that the city created conditions that harmed plaintiffs.
According to the lawsuit, city officials wrongly claimed in annual budget messages dating back more than a decade that flood-control work had been done when it was not in fact completed.
“Beginning with the 2013 fiscal year budget, the city of San Diego began reporting Chollas Creek flood control maintenance projects as ‘Accomplishments,’” the complaint says. “However, in a material number of instances, the creek flood control maintenance projects were not ‘Accomplishments’ because the projects were not started, were not finished, or were not funded.”
The suit also says money that should have been invested in clearing out Chollas Creek was diverted in 2021 to buy out the troubled lease for the former Sempra Energy headquarters at 101 Ash St. The city later signed off on borrowing money, and issuing $126 million in bonds, to backfill the diverted funding for capital projects.
Mayor Todd Gloria pushed the City Council to approve a legal settlement under which the city would buy the property for $86 million, even though it cannot be safely occupied due to asbestos and other issues.
Gloria said the agreement was the best path forward for city officials who had agreed to a badly lopsided lease back in 2016. But the decision also led to the closure of civil and criminal cases related to the transaction.
To date, San Diego has spent more than $200 million on the 19-story office tower, which remains vacant.
The latest flood-related lawsuit s a case filed earlier this month by San Diego lawyer Evan Walker on behalf of hundreds of plaintiffs. That case alleges the same four causes of action and two others: tresing and a violation of the code of civil procedure.
Meanwhile, another well-known San Diego law firm is hosting a townhall-style meeting Thursday night to provide information to potential plaintiffs.
The Singleton Schreiber firm said it already has some 180 families signed on and plans to sue the city later this year.
The proposed class-action case filed last week has been assigned to Judge Matthew C. Braner. An initial management conference has been tentatively scheduled for Dec. 6.
The case filed by Walker was assigned to Judge Marcella O. McLaughlin. A hearing in that matter will be held Nov. 22.
