City Liable for Flooding Damages to Home

January 3, 2008 | Erin Herbold

Inverse condemnation is a legal term that describes a situation where the government takes private property, but fails to compensate the property owner as required by the Fifth Amendment.  To be compensated, the property owner must then sue the government.  That’s why the action is called “inverse” – the order of the parties is reversed as compared to direct condemnation where the government sues a property owner to take the owner’s property.  Caselaw reveals that the taking can be either physical, deprivation of access, removal of ground support or regulatory.  Inverse condemnation is not necessarily limited to the taking of land.  It can involve a taking of personal property, intellectual property or contract rights.

A suit for inverse condemnation against a town was involved in this case.  The plaintiffs, homeowners in Tripoli, Iowa, sued the town after heavy rains flooded their home and completely destroyed it.  They claimed the town negligently designed a city street improvement project before the flood occurred, and that act consisted of a “taking” of their home requiring compensation.  The town claimed immunity, and their expert witnesses testified that the town’s obligation was to design streets to withstand a ten-year event (4.5 inches of rainfall in a certain time period).  The plaintiff’s expert testified that the town’s obligation was to construct streets to withstand a 100-year event – i.e., the street and drainage system should be able to handle a rain of at least 6.4 inches in a certain time period.  The trial court determined that the plaintiffs’ expert was more credible and rejected the town’s immunity defense, awarding the plaintiffs damages for the full value of their home, including personal items and clean-up costs.  The town appealed.

On appeal, the court affirmed.  The appellate court noted that the trial court properly determined that the plaintiffs’ expert was more credible.  While the property had flooded prior to the street improvement, the flooding was worse after completion of the project and made the plaintiffs’ home uninhabitable.  Bradley v. City of Tripoli, No. 7-757/07-0002, 2007 Iowa App. LEXIS 1314 (Iowa Ct. App. Dec. 28, 2007).