Facts
- Flint residents and property owners sued state officials and former city emergency managers over events commonly known as the Flint water crisis.
- While Flint was under state-appointed emergency management, officials switched Flint’s drinking-water source in 2014 from Detroit-supplied treated water to the Flint River.
- Plaintiffs alleged the Flint River water was unsafe, that officials were warned Flint’s treatment plant could not safely treat the new source, and that officials nonetheless proceeded and concealed safety information for a time.
- Plaintiffs alleged resulting harms including physical injury (including lead exposure), damage associated with corrosive water, and reduced property values.
- Two claims were central on appeal: (1) a state constitutional tort for violation of bodily integrity under the Michigan Constitution’s Due Process Clause (Const. 1963, art. 1, § 17), and (2) inverse condemnation seeking just compensation for an alleged taking reflected in property damage and diminished value.
- Defendants sought summary disposition on jurisdictional, immunity, notice, and pleading grounds; the Court of Claims denied summary disposition as to these two claims, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
Issues
- Whether plaintiffs sufficiently pleaded a state constitutional due-process claim for violation of bodily integrity based on alleged compelled exposure to contaminated drinking water.
- Whether plaintiffs sufficiently pleaded inverse condemnation by alleging government action substantially caused a decline in property value and constituted an abuse of governmental power amounting to a taking.
- Whether governmental immunity, notice requirements, or asserted pleading defects (including a “unique or special injury” requirement) required dismissal at the summary-disposition stage.
Decision
- The Michigan Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals’ ruling that plaintiffs adequately pleaded an inverse-condemnation claim.
- The Court affirmed the Court of Appeals’ decision on the bodily-integrity due-process claim by equal division, leaving the denial of summary disposition in place.
- Defendants did not obtain dismissal at the pleading stage on governmental-immunity, notice, or related procedural theories as to these two claims.
Legal Principles
- Inverse condemnation requires allegations that the government substantially caused the decline in the plaintiff’s property and abused its power by taking actions against the property.
- Widespread harm does not categorically defeat an inverse-condemnation claim; the “similarly situated” comparison is not applied so rigidly that a large number of affected owners are barred from pleading a taking.
- A substantive due-process claim for violation of bodily integrity may proceed where plaintiffs allege a nonconsensual intrusion into the body through governmental conduct lacking a legitimate objective and alleged to be conscience-shocking.
- On summary disposition, courts accept well-pleaded factual allegations as true and view them in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, asking legal sufficiency rather than ultimate proof.
- Statutory governmental-immunity defenses do not automatically foreclose claims seeking remedies for direct violations of rights grounded in the Michigan Constitution.
Conclusion
The Michigan Supreme Court allowed Flint residents’ inverse-condemnation claim to proceed by majority decision and allowed their bodily-integrity due-process claim to proceed through an affirmance by equal division, holding that the pleaded allegations were legally sufficient to survive summary disposition.