RICK BRADLEY and JULIE BRADLEY, Plaintiffs-Appellees, vs. CITY OF TRIPOLI, IOWA, Defendant-Appellant.
Annotate this Case
Download PDF
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 7-757 / 07-0002
Filed December 28, 2007
RICK BRADLEY and JULIE BRADLEY,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
vs.
CITY OF TRIPOLI, IOWA,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Bremer County, Jon Stuart Scoles,
Judge.
The City of Tripoli appeals from the judgment in favor of the Bradleys on
their claims of inverse condemnation and negligence. AFFIRMED.
Timothy Luce of Anfinson & Luce, Waterloo, for appellant.
Carolyn Rafferty and David J. Dutton of Dutton, Braun, Staack & Hellman,
P.L.C., Waterloo, for appellee.
Heard by Sackett, C.J., and Vaitheswaran and Baker, JJ.
2
VAITHESWARAN, J.
Rick Bradley owned a home in the City of Tripoli (City). In 2003, the City
began a street improvement project in front of the Bradleys’ home. The following
year, the City experienced heavy rains. The Bradleys’ home flooded, filling the
basement and the first floor of the house with water.
The Bradleys were
evacuated.
Before the flooding, the house had a fair market value of $36,000. After
the flooding, the fair market value of the home was $0.
The Bradleys sued the City, alleging it was negligent in its design of the
2003 street improvement project and its actions amounted to a taking of property
without compensation in violation of the United States and Iowa Constitutions.
The City answered with an affirmative defense that it was immune from liability.
Following trial, the district court entered judgment in favor of Rick Bradley for
$36,000. The court also awarded the Bradleys $9711 in compensatory damages
for the loss of their furniture and vehicles, and to cover moving costs and the cost
of transporting items to the dump. The district court subsequently denied the
City’s motion for enlarged findings and conclusions and this appeal followed.
I.
Negligence Claim.
The City contends it was immune from liability on the negligence claim
pursuant to Iowa Code sections 670.4(7) and (8) (2005). These provisions afford
cities immunity from claims of negligent design of streets or public improvements
constructed or reconstructed “in accordance with a generally recognized
engineering or safety standard, criteria, or design theory in existence at the time
of the construction or reconstruction.”
3
The experts for both parties agreed as a general matter that the pertinent
engineering standards are based on “events,” which in turn are based on inches
of rainfall. For example, a “five-year event” was defined by one of the experts as
3.9 inches of rainfall, a “ten-year event” was defined as 4.5 inches, and a “onehundred-year event” was defined as 6.4 inches.
The experts disagreed on which event applied to the 2003 street
improvement project. The Bradleys’ expert testified the project should have been
designed for a one-hundred-year event. He further testified the City’s design
violated that criterion. Most pertinently, he stated that, while there was no code
requirement imposing a one-hundred-year design standard “the experts in flood
plain management are what most engineers follow.”
The City’s expert testified that the applicable design criterion for a street
improvement project varied between a five- and fifty-year event. He stated the
2003 project was originally designed for a five-year event but, as actually
constructed, the project met a ten-year standard. He opined that the City was
not obligated to design this project for a one-hundred-year event and its design
was within industry standards.
The district court adopted the testimony of the Bradleys’ expert, finding his
testimony “that such a design was not in accordance with generally recognized
engineering principles to be more credible.” The district court was in the best
position to make this credibility assessment. Iowa R. App. P. 6.14(6)(g). Based
on this finding, the court did not err in rejecting the immunity defense.
4
II.
Inverse Condemnation Claim.
“Inverse condemnation is an action pursued by a property owner who
claims a governmental entity has appropriated all or part of the owner’s property
interest without a formal condemnation proceeding.” K&W Electric, Inc. v. State,
712 N.W.2d 107, 115-16 (Iowa 2006) (citations omitted).
“A claimant must
establish that the damage to property for which recovery is sought would not
have occurred but for the public improvement.” Connolly v. Dallas County, 465
N.W.2d 875, 878 (Iowa 1991).
The City essentially argues there has not been a taking because flooding
was characteristic of the property. While there is evidence the property flooded
before 2004, there is also evidence that the flooding was more severe after the
2003 street improvement project. For example, a former resident of the property
testified that the home flooded a handful of times during the twenty years that he
lived there, but he presented no evidence that the repair costs exceeded the
value of the home following those floods. In 1999, flooding occurred following
eight inches of rainfall, but the flooding only brought a layer of mud and no
substantial problems.
In contrast, the 2004 flooding rendered the Bradleys’
home uninhabitable. The Bradleys’ expert attributed the severity of the damage
directly to the City’s design of the 2003 street improvement project.
The
reconstruction lowered the grade of the street. In his opinion, this and other
changes caused an earlier and greater concentration of water on the Bradleys’
property.
He opined that any rains over a five-year event would flood the
Bradleys’ home.
5
The City’s expert admitted that the 3.65 inches of rainfall during the 2004
flood was less than the 3.9 inches for which the 2003 project was originally
designed and he admitted the property would flood every time there was a fiveyear event. The following testimony is instructive:
Q. This property is going to flood every time there is a fiveyear event; correct? A. Well, every time that it tops the structure
and overflows the road, there will be water that goes on to the
Bradley Property.
Q. All right. And every time there is a five-year event or
more – A. Um-hmm.
Q. – and the water overtops the street, it’s going to flood this
property? A. The property itself, yes.
Q. Well, the house is on the property, is it not? A. Yes, it is.
Based on this evidence, we affirm the district court’s resolution of the inverse
condemnation claim.
AFFIRMED.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
