Case Law Summaries

Sull v. Norwood Self Storage

• Opinion Date: May 18, 2001
• Real Property Law
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REASONABLE USE DOCTRINE—A landowner may alter drainage on its land in any way chosen so long as the altered drainage does not unreasonably injure neighboring land, and the test to be applied is a flexible one.

A self storage facility was frequently inundated with flood waters due, in part, to an irregular drainage system. The Court held that the flooding resulted from “a gradually increasing functional incapacity” of the original drainage system because of subsequent development. As a consequence, the Court concluded that requests for injunctive relief to compel the municipality to revise the drainage system was inappropriate because “too much of the official decision-making process in dealing with such a problem at the various stages of its development was grounded in governmental judgment and discretion to permit the sanction of an imposition of damages for result of its exercise.” The original plan for drainage was an exercise of official judgment and when serious flooding occurred thereafter, “governmental judgment and discretion had to be exercised as to whether or when to remedy it, or how, in terms of priorities of need as between the exigency and the others [the municipality] faced.” Thus, the problem never ceased to be one of an exercise in discretionary judgment and New Jersey statutes which prohibit a court from interfering in a discretionary judgment of a municipality effectively eliminated the right of the self storage owner to have the Court order the municipality to redesign its drainage system. The self storage owner also sought to have certain upstream property owners alter the drainage on their land, but the Court looked to the “reasonable use rule,” which “permits each land owner to alter the drainage on the land in any way chosen so long as the altered drainage does not unreasonably injure neighboring land.” This is a flexible test, considering factors including: “the amount of harm or injury to neighboring lands; the foreseeability of impact on neighboring lands, the purpose of motive with which the possessor acted; the benefit to the drained land; the burden on either party of ameliorating the injury; the extent of the change to the drainage system; the protection of the public interest; and all other relevant considerations.” Using those factors, the Court upheld the lower court, holding that “although the present situation is far from satisfactory, the proposed solution is palpably unsatisfactory.” As such, the Court held that the lower court correctly applied the reasonable use doctrine which establishes “that each possessor is legally privileged to make a reasonable use of his land, even though the flow of surface waters is altered thereby and causes some harm to others, but incurs liability when his harmful interference with the flow of surface waters is unreasonable.”

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