Brewer v. Alaska
Annotate this CaseMajor forest fires swept through areas south of Fairbanks in the summer of 2009 and approached properties owned by appellants (the landowners). Firefighters working under the direction of the State Department of Forestry intentionally set fire to the landowners’ vegetation. The burnouts deprived the advancing wildfires of fuel and saved the structures. But the landowners sued the State, bringing a takings claim under the eminent domain provision of the Alaska Constitution, article I, section 18, and tort claims for negligence and intentional misconduct. The Supreme Court affirmed the superior court’s dismissal of the tort claims because of governmental immunity; it reversed its dismissal of the constitutional claim, remanding it to the superior court for further consideration of whether the specific exercise of the State’s police powers at issue here was justified by the doctrine of necessity.
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