ARIANE WITTMAN and JEREMY TAYLEN, Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. CITY OF BILLINGS, Defendant and Appellee

ARIANE WITTMAN and JEREMY TAYLEN, Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. CITY OF BILLINGS, Defendant and Appellee. Oral Argument is set for Friday, September 10, 2021, at 9:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Missoula Downtown with an introduction to the oral argument beginning at 9:00 a.m. In 2019, approximately 1000 gallons of raw sewage backed up into the basement of Ariane Wittman and Jeremy Taylen’s home in Billings due to a blockage in a City sewage line caused by grease accumulation. Wittman and Taylen sued the City for damages caused by the sewage overflow under the theory of “inverse condemnation” because, they argued, the discharge of sewage into their home constituted a governmental “taking” of their property and they were therefore entitled to compensation under the eminent domain provisions of Article II, Section 29, of the Montana Constitution. The District Court ruled that Montana’s inverse condemnation law does not allow for Wittman and Taylen to recover damages in this instance because the City’s discharge of sewage into their basement was inadvertent and not a deliberate “taking” of their property. On appeal, Wittman and Taylen argue that Montana’s inverse condemnation laws do not require that the “taking” be deliberate, but only that it is an inevitable or reasonably foreseeable consequence of a government undertaking. In this case, they maintain that sewage overflows onto private property due to grease accumulation inevitably occur because of the design of the City’s sewer system.