Finding that “not all private property damage bearing some causal relationship to a public improvement results in liability,” the Supreme Court in City of Oroville v. Superior Court today holds a city is not liable in inverse condemnation for a blockage in its sewage system that damaged a dental practice with raw sewage, because the dentists failed to install a required backwater valve that would have prevented or substantially mitigated the damage. The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar concludes that liability depended on the damage having been “substantially caused by an inherent risk presented by the deliberate design, construction, or maintenance of the public improvement.”
The court reverses the Third District Court of Appeal. It also disapproves a 2006 Sixth District opinion.
