| WASHINGTON -- Uncle Sam is back on the hook for damages from a 1995 San
Joaquin Valley flood.
In an important new ruling by a usually obscure federal appellate
court, the federal government has been ordered to reimburse California
several million dollars for damages from the March 1995 flood. The state
has already paid farmers for land washed out on the Valley's west side.
"It's a ruling that we had hoped to get at trial, and we're
gratified," Gordon Burns, the California deputy attorney general who
handled the case, said Wednesday.
California can now expect at least $2.8 million to refill the state
coffers used to pay farmers.
The exact amount has yet to be determined but will certainly be higher,
in part to cover the state's related costs.
More than the money for past damages, the ruling issued Tuesday by the
U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals means the federal government can't
duck its share of future claims along the 102-mile San Luis Canal. The
joint state-and-federal facility irrigates approximately 500,000 acres of
San Joaquin Valley land.
"Flooding along the San Luis Canal is a recurring problem, so
establishing this principle is very important, because [the problem] is
not going to go away," Burns said.
Most significantly, the ruling clarifies that sovereign immunity can't
protect the federal government from meeting its contractual obligations.
In the case of the state-and-federal San Luis Canal, this means the
federal government remains bound by contract to pay 45% of costs that
include damages.
"When the government enters into a contract, they're engaging in
conduct that's exposing them [to liability], and they should be
exposed," Fresno-based lawyer Timothy Jones said approvingly.
Jones won a Supreme Court case this year on behalf of Madera County
pistachio growers whose 1,000-acre orchard had likewise suffered flood
damage from a federal canal. That earlier ruling essentially narrowed a
long-standing government immunity for damages from flood-control projects.
The Supreme Court in that case said what matters is "the character of
the waters that cause the relevant damage" and not simply whether the
phrase "flood control" is included.
The new ruling makes note of the Madera County case but builds most of
its conclusion on what Burns called the "fairly novel"
contractual arrangement between the state and federal government.
Several times since the San Luis Canal was completed in 1967,
California has paid neighboring farmers for flood damages and has
subsequently been reimbursed by its federal partner. In 1995, the
so-called Arroyo Pasajero flood incited nearly two dozen claims. But in a
twist that Burns said "they never really explained," federal
lawyers decided to claim sovereign immunity.
That decision, in turn, complicated farmers' efforts to get paid.
"When the federal government took that position, that they were
going to hide behind a sovereign-immunity defense, the state said that if
[the federal government was] going to stonewall then the state would not
step up," said Bob Dowd, a Hanford lawyer who represented several
Fresno County farmers. |