November 27, 2024
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has refused to let the federal government escape a suit filed by property owners who claimed that their properties were taken without just compensation due to years of destructive flooding caused by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In his Monday ruling, Judge Armando O. Bonilla denied the federal government’s judgment on the pleadings motion, which alleged that the court should toss claims made under the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause if those claims were based on “less than three floods” damaging the plaintiffs’ properties.
The plaintiffs began their suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in 2014, claiming that the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers’ Missouri River Recovery Program caused flooding that damaged their properties. In November 2023, the Federal Circuit refused to rethink its June 2023 decision that affirmed an award of over $7 million in damages to three bellwether plaintiffs.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Seth C. Wright, David K. Schultz and E. Benton Keatley of Polsinelli PC and Benjamin D. Brown and Alexander J. Noronha of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
Read Claims Court Won’t Let US Slip Landowners’ Flooding Suit.