Luedtke v. County of Milwaukee

371 F. Supp. 1040, 1974 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12312
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Wisconsin
DecidedFebruary 11, 1974
Docket73-C-371
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 371 F. Supp. 1040 (Luedtke v. County of Milwaukee) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Wisconsin primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Luedtke v. County of Milwaukee, 371 F. Supp. 1040, 1974 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12312 (E.D. Wis. 1974).

Opinion

DECISION and ORDER

MYRON L. GORDON, District Judge.

This matter is before me on the defendants’ motion to dismiss. The plaintiffs own and reside at property located near General Mitchell Field, a major airport facility situated in and owned, operated and maintained by Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. The defendants include the county and the five federally-certified airlines which utilize that airport facility.

The plaintiffs allege that “aircraft . pass over (their) property or (in) close proximity thereto, at unreasonably low altitudes, while taking off and landing,” thus causing “noise, vibration, dust, fumes, soot, unexpended jet fuel, noxious substances and other particulate matter to be dropped upon” their property. On the basis of these allegations, the plaintiffs charge the defendants with negligence, creation of a nuisance, and violation of § 114.04, Wis. Stats., which deals with liability for low altitude, dangerous or damage-causing flights.

In addition to actual and punitive damages, the plaintiffs request an injunction directing Milwaukee County to initiate condemnation proceedings against their property. The judicial promulgation of certain proposed rules and regulations to govern the normal aircraft and airport operations at Mitchell Field is also sought. The defendant county is alleged to have violated certain federal regulations, but no such violations are ascribed to the defendant airlines. Subsequent to the filing of the instant complaint, the plaintiffs initiated state court inverse condemnation proceedings against Milwaukee County.

Jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ three causes of action is predicated solely upon 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1337; the plaintiffs maintain that the defendants have “individually and collectively . confiscated and condemned the property of the plaintiffs without due process of law, contrary to the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.”

The gravamen of the complaint is that the defendants have imposed upon the plaintiffs’ property what amounts to an avigation servitude, which is claimed to be actionable under the constitution. Therefore, I need not decide whether federal question jurisdiction can be in *1043 voked where a claim of unconstitutionality is appended to three apparently non-federal question causes of action for common law negligence, nuisance, and state statute violation. Notwithstanding the liberal interpretation to be given the complaint, I nevertheless conclude that the defendants’ motion to dismiss should be granted.

I.

No cause of action is stated as against any of the defendants under the fifth amendment because that amendment applies only to a taking by the federal government and not to actions by state agencies or, private airlines. Fall-brook Irrigation District v. Bradley, 164 U.S. 112, 17 S.Ct. 56, 41 L.Ed. 369 (1896); City of Boston v. Massachusetts Port Authority, 320 F.Supp. 1317 (D.Mass.1971), affirmed 444 F.2d 167 (1st Cir. 1971).

II.

No cause of action is stated as against the defendant airlines under the fourteenth amendment. In Griggs v. County of Allegheny, 369 U.S. 84, 82 S.Ct. 531, 7 L.Ed.2d 585 (1962), the United States Supreme Court held that when a person is deprived of the use of his property by planes flying in glide approaches to an airport constructed and operated by a state instrumentality, the person is deprived of his property, within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment, by the state instrumentality. The deprivation of property, while effected by flights of aircraft, is attributable to the state instrumentality’s actions in creating and operating the airport. City of Boston v. Massachusetts Port Authority, supra. As the Supreme Court observed in Griggs, “the promoter, owner and lessor of the airport, was . the one who took the air easement in the constitutional sense.” 369 U.S. at 89, 82 S.Ct. at 534.

If the fourteenth amendment does require Milwaukee County to compensate the plaintiffs for its imposition upon their property of what amounts to an avigation servitude, the airlines are under no independent duty to make compensation oh the theory that the taking which gives rise to the claim of compensation was effected with the aid of the airlines. See Yearsley v. Ross Construction Co., 309 U.S. 18, 60 S.Ct. 413, 84 L.Ed. 554 (1940).

III.

Assuming, arguendo, that the defendant airlines were subject to the jurisdiction of this court, the purported causes of action for common law negligence and nuisance as well as the violation of § 114.04, Wis.Stats., are not maintainable here. There exists no allegation that the various acts charged to the airlines violated the federal laws and regulations to which the airlines are subject and within which they must operate. In my opinion, the airlines cannot successfully be charged with actionable negligence, the creation of a nuisance, or the violation of a state statute dealing with liability for low altitude flights, so long as the airline operations complained of constitute activities authorized by federal laws and regulations. See Richards v. Washington Terminal Co., 233 U.S. 546, 34 S.Ct. 654, 58 L.Ed. 1088 (1914). It is clear that local attempts, public or private, to control and to regulate the operations of airports and air carriers have been preempted by the federal government. See City of Burbank v. Lockheed Air Terminal, Inc., 411 U.S. 624, 93 S.Ct. 1854, 36 L.Ed.2d 547 (1973); Cf. Virginians for Dulles v. Volpe, 344 F.Supp. 573 (E.D.Va.1972).

I have examined the cases cited by the plaintiffs in support of their contention that “those who operate aircraft may not cause damage through the negligent operation thereof.” Each involved situations in which the aircraft in question was not operated in accordance with usual and customary standards, the latter constituting the measure for negligence. By contrast, the plaintiffs do not allege that the airlines have violated any federal regulations, but rather, they at *1044 tack these usual and customary standards themselves.

The bombardment of noise, fumes and particulate matter of which the plaintiffs complain is but a necessary by-product of modern flight. See American Airlines v. Town of Hemp-stead, 272 F.Supp. 226 (E.D.N.Y.1967), affirmed 398 F.2d 369 (2d Cir. 1968), cert. den. 393 U.S. 1017, 89 S.Ct. 620, 21 L.Ed.2d 561 (1969).

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371 F. Supp. 1040, 1974 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12312, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/luedtke-v-county-of-milwaukee-wied-1974.