## Facts

- Jack Benetatos and Nick Benetatos owned and operated Tam’s Burgers No. 6, a fast-food restaurant in Los Angeles with a parking lot, drive-through, and walk-up windows near residential homes.
- Police received repeated complaints and documented incidents of criminal and nuisance activity associated with the site, including prostitution-related activity, narcotics activity, loitering, public drinking, graffiti, and trash; reports included two homicides within two years and a narcotics arrest involving an employee.
- The City initiated a nuisance-abatement proceeding under the Los Angeles Municipal Code based on police information, community complaints, and a planning investigator’s site inspection documenting poor maintenance conditions.
- After an administrative hearing, a zoning administrator found the restaurant was operated in a manner constituting a nuisance and imposed 22 operating conditions to mitigate the activity (including security, maintenance, anti-loitering measures, physical modifications, and limits on hours).
- The City Council denied the owners’ administrative appeal and adopted the nuisance finding and conditions.
- The owners petitioned for administrative mandamus under Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 1094.5, arguing the City was improperly holding them responsible for third-party criminal conduct and that the conditions were so burdensome they threatened the business, requiring independent-judgment review.
- The superior court denied the petition, finding substantial evidence supported the nuisance determination and conditions.
- The owners appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the superior court should have applied independent-judgment review on the theory that the operating conditions impaired a fundamental vested right to continue operating the restaurant.
2. Whether, under the proper standard of review, substantial evidence supported the City’s determination that the manner of operating the restaurant constituted a public nuisance warranting the imposed conditions.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment denying the writ petition.
- The court held the superior court correctly applied substantial-evidence review because the owners did not show the conditions effectively deprived them of a fundamental vested right.
- The court held substantial evidence supported the administrative finding that the restaurant’s operation contributed to or constituted a public nuisance and that the conditions were justified as abatement measures.

## Legal Principles

- In administrative mandamus review, independent-judgment review applies only when an agency decision substantially affects a fundamental vested right; otherwise, the reviewing court applies the substantial-evidence test.
- A business may be subject to nuisance-abatement conditions when substantial evidence shows that the manner of operation materially contributes to public nuisance conditions, even if much of the misconduct is by third parties.
- Under substantial-evidence review, courts do not reweigh evidence; they determine whether the record, viewed as a whole, contains evidence of reasonable, credible, and solid value supporting the agency’s findings.
- Operational and property-management practices (e.g., maintenance failures, inadequate control of loitering, extended hours, insufficient security) may supply the causal nexus supporting a nuisance determination and remedial operating conditions.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the City’s nuisance finding and 22 operational conditions for Tam’s Burgers No. 6, ruling that substantial-evidence review governed because the conditions did not amount to a deprivation of a fundamental vested right and that the administrative record adequately linked the restaurant’s operating practices to ongoing nuisance activity.


Benetatos v. City of Los Angeles, 235 Cal. App. 4th 1270 (Ct. App. 2015)