The contours of inverse condemnation liability are often tested by creative California plaintiff's lawyers. In an opinion earlier this year, one Northern California Federal Court dealt with a novel lawsuit in which the Vichy Springs Resort asserted Federal and state-based inverse condemnation theories against the City of Ukiah arising out the City's shooting range used to train its police officers (Vichy Springs Resort v. Ukiah).
According to the complaint, guests have been visiting the resort for almost two centuries to take in the curative powers of the carbonated warm spring waters. The complaint further alleges that it is not terribly conducive to restorative therapy if the guests need be concerned from bullets flying over the berm from the neighboring shooting range and coming dangerously close to the resort's patrons.
If the allegations are proven to be true, one might reasonably conclude the City might face potential liability for nuisance, property damage, and trespass, but do the bullets invading the resort's air space inversely condemn plaintiff's property?
The District court's February 13, 2025 opinion granted many elements of the FRCP 12(b)(6) City's motion to dismiss the complaint but gave the resort ample opportunity to amend its allegations to address concerns regarding the statute of limitations and standing. Importantly, however, the court's opinion left the resort's state law claims for inverse condemnation intact. Unfortunately, we evidently will not have any type of definitive answer as to whether these allegations, if established, can provide a basis for inverse liability, as the parties appear to be near the final stages of reaching a settlement and the issues will likely not be further litigated. We therefore will need to wait for another day to discover whether live ammunition straying from a public agency's property onto a private owner's commercial property can give rise to inverse condemnation damages.
The court's opinion can be found at 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26614.
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