Background
Willienard Banks and Aaron Jackson own adjacent lots in Chestnut Run, a residential subdivision in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. In 2021, their properties began to flood intermittently due to broken pipes in a drain easement running beneath their land. The plaintiffs sued the township, the county road commission, and various officials under Section nineteen eighty-three, claiming violations of the federal and state takings clauses and other guarantees. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim.
The court’s reasoning
The court affirmed the dismissal, holding that the plaintiffs failed to state a claim for a physical taking. The Fifth Amendment requires that a taking be the intended or foreseeable result of government action, and negligent infliction of injury does not constitute a taking. The court found that the plaintiffs did not allege that the government could have foreseen that road improvements would cause the flooding. Furthermore, the drain easement was private property owned by the developer, not the government. Because the township and county lacked a possessory interest in the easement, their failure to maintain it did not involve government appropriation. The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ regulatory taking, due process, equal protection, and civil conspiracy claims for similar reasons, noting the absence of state action or adequate comparators.
The prohibition applies to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Murr v. Wisconsin, 582 U.S. 383, 392 (2017)
What it means going forward
Property owners cannot hold local governments liable for flooding caused by broken private infrastructure unless they can prove the government intended or foreseeably caused the damage or owns the infrastructure.