Fritz v. Washoe County , 2016 NV 57 ( 2016 )

132 Nevi, Advance Opinion 57
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEVADA
JOHN FRITZ; AND MELISSA FRITZ, No. 67660
Appellants,
vs. FILED
WASHOE COUNTY,
Respondent. AUG 0 4 2016
E K. LINDEMAN
CL MIc UV'tJVMM&cO LJIRT
BY
HIEF ID TY CLERK
Appeal from a district court summary judgment in an-inverse
condemnation action. Second Judicial District Court, Washoe County;
Janet J. Berry, Judge.
Reversed and remanded.
Luke A. Busby, Reno,
for Appellants.
Christopher J. Hicks, District Attorney, and Stephan J. Hollandsworth,
Deputy District Attorney, Washoe County,
for Respondent.
BEFORE DOUGLAS, CHERRY and GIBBONS, JJ.
OPINION
By the Court, DOUGLAS, J.:
In this appeal, we are asked to consider whether, when a
county approved subdivision maps, directed the flow of water, and
accepted street dedications during the building process of two upstream
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developments, its actions constituted substantial involvement to support
inverse condemnation in the flooding of a downstream property. We
conclude that inverse condemnation is a viable theory of liability and
genuine issues of material fact remain as to the County's substantial
involvement in the development of the drainage system at issue. We
therefore reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment.
BACKGROUND
In 2001, appellants John and Melissa Fritz purchased
property adjacent to Whites Creek. Before the Fritzes purchased their
property, Washoe County approved plat maps for the upstream
development Lancer Estates. After the Fritzes purchased their property,
Washoe County approved plat maps for another upstream development,
Monte Rosa. Washoe County subsequently accepted various street
dedications that were incorporated into the upstream developments'
drainage system, which diverts water to Whites Creek.' Since the
construction of the developments, the Fritzes' property floods during
heavy rainstorms.
In 2013, the Fritzes filed an inverse condemnation complaint
against Washoe County. The Fritzes alleged that Washoe County
approved plat maps, managed and directed development of the water
drainage system, approved final maps, and ultimately accepted dedication
of the water drainage system that increased the flow of water to Whites
"It is clear from the record that Washoe County accepted certain
street dedications. However, it is not clear whether Washoe County
accepted dedication of other improvements incorporated into the drainage
system, formally or informally.
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449F4-1,A:17—*W471:4).
Creek and caused flooding to their property. According to the Fritzes,
Washoe County's conduct constituted substantial involvement in activities
that caused the taking of their property.
Washoe County answered and then filed a motion for
summary judgment, arguing that the Fritzes did not have standing to
assert claims against it for plat maps it approved before the Fritzes owned
their property. As to the maps approved after the Fritzes came into
ownership, and its acceptance of dedications, Washoe County argued that
its conduct was not substantial and did not give rise to the Fritzes' inverse
condemnation claim.
The Fritzes opposed Washoe County's motion for summary
judgment and attached documents detailing Washoe County's involvement
in the developments' draining scheme. One such document was a 1996
letter from the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) to Washoe
County. In the letter, NDOT refers to a previous agreement with Washoe
County wherein Washoe County would direct the developers to convey
water north through Lancer Estates. NDOT then requested that Washoe
County follow through with that agreement. In addition to the letter, the
Fritzes submitted the Lancer Estates Hydrology Report, wherein the
developers stated that they were in compliance with the NDOT and
Washoe County agreement to convey water north.
Ultimately, the district court granted summary judgment in
favor of Washoe County. The court reasoned that Washoe County's
approval of subdivision maps and acceptance of dedications did not
amount to substantial involvement sufficient to support a claim for
inverse condemnation. The Fritzes appealed.
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DISCUSSION
"This court reviews a district court's grant of summary
judgment de novo, without deference to the findings of the lower court."
Wood v. Safeway, Inc., 121 Nev. 724, 729, 121 P.3d 1026, 1029 (2005).
Summary judgment is proper if "the pleadings and other evidence on file
demonstrate that no genuine issue as to any material fact [remains] and
that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Id.
(alteration in original) (internal quotation omitted). When reviewing a
summary judgment motion, all evidence and reasonable inferences "must
be viewed in a light most favorable to the nonmoving party." Id.
Standing
On appeal, Washoe County contends that the Fritzes do not
have standing to assert their inverse condemnation claim because Washoe
County approved the majority of subdivision maps before the Fritzes
owned the land. Construing the facts in a light most favorable to the
Fritzes, we disagree.
Takings claims lie with the party who owned the property at
the time the taking occurred. Argier v. Nev. Power Co., 114 Nev. 137, 139,
952 P.2d 1390, 1391 (1998). The Fritzes alleged that their property was
taken by flooding as a result of heavy rainstorms occurring during the
course of their ownership. The district court made no findings with regard
to when the taking occurred. Thus, a genuine issue of material fact
remains as to the issue of standing, and we cannot uphold summary
judgment on this ground.
Substantial involvement
The district court found that Washoe County approved maps
and accepted certain dedications. The Fritzes presented evidence that
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Washoe County also directed the developer to divert water north from
Mount Rose Highway into Whites Creek. According to the Fritzes, these
actions constitute substantial government involvement in private
activities that led to an increased quantity and flow of water in Whites
Creek and flooding on their property. Washoe County contends that
approval of maps and acceptance of dedications are insufficient to
constitute substantial involvement giving rise to a claim for inverse
condemnation.
The Takings Clause of the United States Constitution
provides that private property shall not "be taken for public use, without
just compensation." U.S. Const. amend. V. Similarly, the Nevada
Constitution provides that "[plrivate property shall not be taken for public
use without just compensation having been first made." Nev. Const. art.
1, § 8(6). When a governmental entity takes property without just
compensation, or initiating an eminent domain action, an aggrieved party
may file a complaint for inverse condemnation. State, Dep't of Transp. v.
Cowan, 120 Nev. 851, 854, 103 P.3d 1, 3 (2004).
Nevada caselaw has not clearly and comprehensively set forth
the elements of inverse condemnation, but we do so now. As the
counterpart of eminent domain, inverse condemnation requires a party to
demonstrate the following: (1) a taking (2) of real or personal interest in
private property (3) for public use (4) without just compensation being
paid (5) that is proximately caused by a governmental entity (6) that has
not instituted formal proceedings. See Dickgieser v. State, 105 P.3d 26, 29
(Wash. 2005); see also ASAP Storage, Inc. v. City of Sparks, 123 Nev. 639,
645-47, 173 P.3d 734, 738-39 (2007) (providing that an interest in real or
personal property satisfies the private property requirement); Gutierrez v.
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Cty. of San Bernardino, 130 Cal. Rptr. 3d 482, 485 (Ct. App. 2011)
(providing that the taking must be proximately caused by a government
entity).
A private party cannot recover in inverse condemnation for
property taken by another private party. However, when a private party
and a government entity act in concert, government responsibility for any
resulting damage to other private property may be established by
demonstrating that the government entity was substantially involved "in
the development of private lands for public use which unreasonably
injure[d] the property of others." Cty. of Clark v. Powers, 96 Nev. 497, 505,
611 P.2d 1072, 1077 (1980); see Gutierrez, 130 Cal. Rptr. 3d at 485 ("To be
a proximate cause, the design, construction, or maintenance of the
improvement must be a substantial cause of the damages.").
The district court reached its conclusion that Washoe County
was not substantially involved, in part, by distinguishing the government
involvement here from the government involvement in Powers. We
affirmed a district court's judgment that held the County liable in inverse
condemnation for acting in conjunction with various private parties to
cause large amounts of water to be cast upon the property of the plaintiff
landowners. 96 Nev. at 499-500, 611 P.2d at 1073-74. We held the
County liable because it "participated actively in the development of these
lands, both by its own planning, design, engineering, and construction
activities and by its adoption of the similar activities of various private
developers as part of the County's master plan for the drainage and flood
control of the area." Id. at 500, 611 P.2d at 1074.
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We agree with the district court that Powers is
distinguishable. The government conduct in Powers can be described as
physical involvement directly attributable to the government entity. Here,
however, the Fritzes did not provide any evidence that Washoe County
participated in the engineering and construction of the developments.
Thus, the district court correctly concluded that the significance of Washoe
County's involvement here is distinguishable from that in Powers.
However, drawing this distinction is not dispositive of the
issues raised in this appeal. Powers indicates that an act, such as
construction, which by any measure reaches the height of substantial
involvement, is sufficient to establish a claim. We have not limited the
range of actions that constitute substantial involvement to physical
engagement in private activities. We have, nonetheless, provided that
claims based on mere planning are outside the scope of substantial
involvement. Sproul Homes of Nev. v. State, Dep't of Highways, 96 Nev.
441, 443, 611 P.2d 620, 621 (1980) ("It is well-established that the mere
planning of a project is insufficient to constitute a taking for which an
inverse condemnation action will lie."). Hence, this case presents a novel
question: whether government activities short of physical labor, but with
more engagement than mere planning, can constitute substantial
involvement in a private development sufficient to constitute public use in
support of inverse condemnation. While we have not previously addressed
this question, the California courts have addressed similar factual
situations.
The district court relied in part on Ullery v. Contra Costa
County to reach its determination that the Fritzes' inverse condemnation
claim was not actionable. 248 Cal. Rptr. 727 (Ct. App. 1988). In Ullery,
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the developer of property located at the bottom of a hill made an offer of
dedication of a water drainage easement in a natural stream running
parallel to the bottom of the hillside, but the County expressly rejected the
dedication. Id. at 728-29. Thereafter, neither the County nor City
performed maintenance on the drainage easement. Id. at 729. A landslide
later injured two hillside neighboring properties, and the landowners
brought suit against the County, City, and Sanitary District, arguing that
the County's approval of tentative and final subdivision maps resulted in
an "environment conducive to landslide damage" caused by erosion from
water drainage. Id. at 731 (internal quotation omitted).
In this case, apparently analogizing it to Ullery, 2 the district
court concluded that Washoe County's approval of subdivision maps and
acceptance of dedications was insufficient to support the Fritzes' inverse
condemnation claim. However, the district court misapplied Ullery. The
Ullery court recognized that a public use or improvement cannot be
demonstrated by mere subdivision map approval, finding that, without the
County's acceptance of the dedication, its "sole participation in the
development process was approval of the tentative and final subdivision
maps. This alone [was] not enough to give rise to establish inverse
condemnation liability." Id. at 731-32. Thus, Ullery draws a distinction
between merely approving subdivision maps and taking other actions,
including accepting dedications. The former, on its own, does not convert
2Although the district court's order does not directly state that the
instant case is analogous to Ullery, this conclusion can be drawn from its
use of the case to reach its conclusion that approving subdivision maps
and dedications is insufficient to constitute inverse condemnation liability.
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the private development into a public use that gives rise to inverse
condemnation liability. We adopt this rule from Ullery.
However, the case at bar is distinguishable from Ullery. The
Fritzes alleged that Washoe County did more than approve subdivision
maps. The Fritzes provided evidence that, among other activities, Washoe
County formally accepted dedications of the streets in the developments
and entered into an agreement with NDOT to direct water from the
developments north into Whites Creek, rather than to allow the water to
follow its natural path down Mount Rose Highway. Therefore, unlike the
county in Ullery, Washoe County has taken actions beyond merely
approving the subdivision maps, and the Fritzes' inverse condemnation
claim here is actionable.
After applying Ullery, we conclude that genuine issues of
material fact exist as to whether Washoe County's actions constituted
substantial involvement in the drainage system sufficient to deem it a
public use. In particular, when resolving a summary judgment motion,
the district court has the obligation to "set forth the undisputed material
facts and legal determinations on which the court granted summary
judgment." NRCP 56(c). In this case, however, the district court's order
summarized the basic facts, but ignored certain evidence provided by the
parties and did not explicitly state which facts were undisputed. On
appeal, while the parties periodically alleged in their briefs that the facts
are undisputed, they differ as to the import and effect of these facts on the
substantial involvement considerations.
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Therefore, because genuine issues of material fact remain, we
reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment and remand this
matter to the district court for proceedings consistent with this opinion. 3
)(1
Douglas
We concur:
J.
Gibbons
3 Washoe County also contends that the injuries caused by flooding
were not substantial. However, the district court did not make findings on
this issue sufficient for this court to review. Therefore, we decline to
consider this question.
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