OH Supreme Court: Summit County may be sued for not repairing road, not clearing obstructions when property was damaged

COLUMBUS, Ohio – An Ohio law that has been used to win judgments for vehicle damage from public agencies that don’t keep up with their roads doesn’t stop at the curb, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled.

In a 4-3 ruling reversing a lower court decision, the court said Summit County may be liable for damage to a woman’s Sagamore Hills home after part of a county road collapsed and the area started flooding.

The ruling overturns Ohio 9th District Court of Appeals decision that found the county was immune from liability for damage to Roberta Schlegel’s home when an adjacent roadway collapsed in May 2017. The appeals court had determined that in Schlegel’s case, there was no exception to the general lawsuit liability local governments receive under Ohio law. The appeals court ruled that the exception only applies to motorists or roadway users who are injured by a road condition.

But writing for the Supreme Court majority, Justice Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, concluded the state law contains no such limitations, according to Court News Ohio, a service of the court.

Justices Patrick Fischer, a Republican, and Democrats Michael Donnelly and Melody Stewart joined Brunner’s opinion.

Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy, a Republican, dissented, joined by fellow Republican Justices Pat DeWine and Joseph Deters.

Rain in May 2017, Schlegel argued, resulted in the road collapsing into a culvert under the road. The resulting debris blocked stormwater, which flooded and damaged her Sagamore Hills home.

Schlegel said she was charged $6,636.56 for cleanup and remediation of the water from the basement flooding and was quoted $52,503.42 to complete other repairs.

Schlegel sued Summit County in October 2018, arguing it was negligent in its upkeep of a culvert. The county asked for a summary judgment about a year later, arguing it was immune from liability for the damage because it’s a local government. The trial court agreed it was not liable.

However, the trial court did not decide all the other arguments in the case, so Schlegel appealed to the 9th District, which ruled that she didn’t meet a burden of proof in her appeal and the county was immune from that part of her complaint.

Schlegel appealed to the Supreme Court.

Under Ohio law, “political subdivisions are liable for injury, death, or loss to person or property caused by their negligent failure to keep public roads in repair and other negligent failure to remove obstructions from public roads.” That section of law generally has applied when motorists seek money for car damage taken from potholes. The Ohio Department of Transportation, for instance, has a form drivers can fill out if they take damage on a state-maintained road. State cases generally go through the court of claims.

But the court’s opinion said that section of law is not limited to road users.

Brunner’s opinion noted that a factual question may remain about whether the county’s negligent failure to keep the road in repair resulted in the flooding of and loss to Schlegel’s property. The opinion added that there also are defenses in Ohio’s government immunity law that may restore the county’s immunity. Whether immunity can be restored is beyond the scope of what the Supreme Court agreed to review in this case, Brunner wrote.

The decision returns the case to the trial court to consider those issues.

In her dissent, Kennedy noted that the Ohio government immunity law defines “public roads” to mean “public roads, highways, streets, avenues, alleys, and bridges within a political subdivision.” That does not include the word “culverts” and that the meaning of the words in the “public roads” definition indicate they are part of the travelled roadway and surface on which vehicles drive.

Laura Hancock covers state government and politics for The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com.