Neighbor Disputes Over Water Damage
Flooding, surface runoff, and even leaking sprinklers can spark disputes between neighbors.
When water causes property damage -- flooded basements, collapsing retaining walls, or soggy gardens, for example -- feuds between neighbors often result. But the legal issues can be as muddy as the mess in your backyard.
Surface Water Runoff and Flooding
As a general rule, a neighbor is not liable for harm caused by the natural conditions of land. If the land lies in such a way that a particular amount of water is dumped onto your backyard every year from rain running off your next-door neighbor's property, it's not legally your neighbor's fault. But what if your neighbor landscapes his property so that the amount of water running onto your yard doubles every year? Your neighbor would say that the change is still caused by the naturally occurring rain, not his landscaping. But you would probably prefer to take your neighbor's action into account. It turns out that three different rules of liability govern situations like this.
The reasonableness rule. In a majority of states, when one neighbor alters the land and damage occurs to another, the neighbor is liable for the damage if the alteration was "unreasonable." If you sue a neighbor over damage you've suffered, judges will want proof that the neighbor did something unreasonable that altered the natural condition and caused your harm.
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What Is Reasonable?
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What is reasonable is decided by the courts on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, courts have found gutters and downspouts that send rainwater onto a neighbor's property to be "unreasonable." To determine if something is reasonable, a court may look at the following factors:
- the nature and importance of any improvements that were made by the culvert
- whether or not the damage was reasonably foreseeable by the ones who made the changes, and
- the extent of damage compared to the value of any improvements.
(Rodrigues v. State, 472 P.2d 509 (Hawaii 1970).)
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