A judge Wednesday denied a motion by a landlord that owns lots on Broadway in Santa Monica used as Waymo recharging stations to intervene as a defendant in order to fight the city’s legal efforts to shut down two autonomous vehicle facilities on grounds they constitute a nuisance.
The city also wants the Waymo overnight operations curtailed due to the effects of noise and lighting on nearby residents. The city’s court papers, filed Dec. 24 in Santa Monica Superior Court, state that those living near the recharging stations have used such terms as “mini-Las Vegas,” “living next door to a spaceship,” “a circus” and “a city that never sleeps” to describe their plight.
One of the original defendants, SMF Property Holdings LLC, the city later dropped as a defendant. In court papers filed Tuesday with Judge Bradley S. Phillips, SMF attorneys asked that their client be allowed to intervene in the legal action as a defendant to protect their rights.
SMF lawyers said the property owner would “suffer substantial irreparable harm” if it is not permitted to intervene in order to oppose the city’s bid for a preliminary injunction against the Waymo operations. However, on Wednesday, the judge denied SMF’s motion.
“SMF could have sought to intervene at any time subsequent to the filing of the complaint; indeed, SMF could have filed a cross-complaint, but chose not to do so,” the judge wrote. “Second, SMF’s interests are adequately protected by (Waymo, which has) every incentive and ability to contest (the city’s) claims vigorously…”
According to the city’s court papers, residents are disturbed by Waymo lot workers talking in the middle of the night as well as the sounds of the Waymo vehicles, which the city contends “echo off buildings along the alleys like a canyon.”
The proposed injunction, set for hearing March 20, would stop recharging operations at the two lots from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. or by ordering other “appropriate measures to abate the nighttime nuisances.”
Although the alleged nuisances have cost residents the peace and quiet enjoyment of their homes, repeated requests from the city to abate the problem have been rejected, the city alleges.
In a sworn declaration, resident Paula Achter, who works from home, says she has had to adjust her sleeping habits and do her job from a different location in her apartment due to the noise from the Waymo vehicles passing by her building. She further says that humans are not the only ones being bothered.
“I used to hear birds singing in the morning from my apartment,” the 69-year-old Achter says. “I’ve noticed I don’t hear them anymore. I believe that they have nested elsewhere due to the Waymo frequency.”
Victoria Benchuk, a single mother of an autistic 5-year-old son, says in her declaration that the Waymo lot near her building opened a few months after she and her boy moved into their apartment in October 2024.
“When there are multiple Waymos stopped in the alley, the noise from the motors, the beeping and the people talking and working in the Waymos lot wake up my son two to four nights a week and he has trouble getting back to sleep,” Benchuk says. ” I often have to bring my son into the living room where I sleep to help him settle back down.”
Benchuk further says her son did not have the same sleeping issues before the Waymo lot opened or when they lived in their prior apartment.
In its own lawsuit filed against the city on Dec. 17, Waymo denies a public nuisance exists. The Waymo suit says that in response to residential complaints, the company hired more staff, implemented software updates to reduce noise levels and frequencies, installed light and noise barriers and modified “vehicle behaviors” in the area.
“These changes resulted in a material decrease in noise and light levels during Waymo’s overnight operations and traffic congestion in the surrounding areas was reduced,” according to the Waymo suit, which seeks injunctive relief preventing the city from interfering with what the company says is its “lawful use of the Broadway facilities.”