Sutherland

In 1977, plaintiffs Douglas and Jill Sutherland bought the Barracks Mall in downtown Fort Bragg, a two-story commercial and residential building that occupies the lot on which it is situated, up to the perimeter of the property line. At that time and continuing to 1997, the lot adjoining Barracks Mall to the south, owned by David Codling (Codling), was vacant. Owing to that fact, tenants in the upstairs apartments on the south side of Barracks Mall received light and air through the south-facing windows and, according to allegations in plaintiffs’ second amended complaint, anticipated using the windows and the adjacent vacant lot as a means of escape in the event of a fire or similar emergency.

Conditions changed, however, in 1997 when defendant City of Fort Bragg (City) granted Codling’s application for a building permit to erect a two-story structure on his lot extending, like plaintiffs’ adjoining building, to his property line, only inches away from the Barracks Mall building. The effect of the building permit and Codling’s subsequent erection of a structure on his lot was to cut off light and air into the windows of the southern-facing Barracks Mall apartments and…