A short one from the California Court of Appeal, Shehyn v. County of Ventura Public Works Agency, No. B337452 (Feb. 20, 2025).

Bottom line: the court reversed the trial court’s demurrer, which had dismissed a flood inverse claim. Good news, the owner gets to press its claim. 

The plaintiff here is the owner of a commercial avocado orchard. The complaint alleged that sediment from the County’s water district damaged irrigation pipes on the owner’s land, and inversely condemned the plaintiff’s property. The trial court sustained the demurrer on the grounds that … get this …  the owner “‘invited’ District water onto his property.” Slip op. at 5.

And how did the avocado farmer “invite” the district’s water on the property? Apparently by being a water customer of the district. Well, the court of appeal wasn’t having any of that, instead viewing the issue as whether the plaintiff alleged it was singled out to bear a disproportionate burden. The court distinguished a case where the court rejected an inverse claim where the owner claimed the water district added an antibacterial agent, which corroded copper pipes:

We do not read this case as creating a brightline rule barring inverse condemnation claims for damage caused by “invited” water, or, stated differently, as limiting inverse condemnation to damages caused by flooding. The premise of inverse condemnation remains whether a property owner bears a disproportionate share of the costs of a public improvement. The homeowners in Williams failed to clear this hurdle because they received the same water as the district’s other customers—not because they consented to that water entering their homes. The court discussed the latter point only in the second part of its analysis, where it rejected the homeowners’ argument that their case was “‘conceptually indistinguishable’” from established lines of authority involving bursting or leaking utility pipes. (Williams, supra, 22 Cal.App.5th at p. 1211.) We also hesitate to perpetuate a broad exclusion that might catch meritorious claims in its net. What if the homeowners in Williams, for example, received chloramine in higher concentrations than other homeowners in the same system. Should turning their taps preclude them from bringing an inverse condemnation claim? We think not. They are customers of a state-sanctioned monopoly who must choose between receiving their utility’s water or none at all.

Slip op. at 6-7.

Shehyn v. Ventura County Public Works Agency, No. B337452 (Cal. Ct. App. Feb. 20, 2025)