Something Stinks (But Not The Jury Award For Houses Flooded w/ Sewage)

Quick one before heading out for the Easter holiday weekend.  Apparently, a Camden County jury recently awarded four property owners over $21,000,000 for damages caused by a flooding event in 2019, which substantially damaged their residential properties.  The plaintiffs’ alleged that before the flooding event in June 2019, their properties ranged in value from $350,000 to $1,300,000. The houses were flooded with untreated sewage effluent and fecal matter.

Even after the houses were cleaned up, the stench of sewage remained.  A real estate expert testified that the properties were unmarketable (and perhaps uninhabitable). Plaintiffs alleged that the Haddonfield utilities authorities had failed to properly maintain its system, which was the proximate cause of the inundation of rank water into their homes.  They dug up an old memorandum from the director of public works which specifically identified plaintiffs’ properties as being at high risk of flood.  The memo recommended that the municipality take action to ameliorate the risk. The memo was ignored.

The jury awarded damages in the amount of $1,900,000 for the loss in the value of the property caused by the flood. The balance of the large award was apparently for tort damages caused by the municipality’s negligence in maintaining its stormwater management system.  A copy of a recent article about the case is avaialble here.

In sum, a great verdict for the property owners.  I wonder if they kept title to the unmarketable properties, and/or whether they contemplated an inverse condemnation action (clearly, the tort award is much higher than a just compensation award, but owning the property is nothing but a liability).