PORTLAND (WGME) — While a Lewiston family struggles, cities and towns claiming immunity from damage caused by public infrastructure is nothing new.
Whether it’s damage to your car from a pothole, or a flooded basement caused by a public sewer or water line, municipalities are often immune in these situations, unless they knew about a problem in advance and didn’t fix it.
Ninety-one-year-old Elsie Boudreau’s basement was destroyed when a city sewer line in Saco backed up.
While a Lewiston family struggles, cities and towns claiming immunity from damage caused by public infrastructure is nothing new. (WGME)
In that case, the city also claimed immunity, saying because they didn’t know about the blockage in the sewer line, they couldn’t have fixed it in advance, and so they weren’t liable.
That left Boudreau on the hook for a $28,000 bill just to clean up her basement.
Current Maine law is the reason.
It says those cities and towns are “immune” from liability for property damage.
That’s unless they had prior notice of a problem and failed to address it.
If a property owner can prove that, a municipality, in theory, could be found liable.
But that would require taking them to court.
So the bottom line here is that while the government may seem at fault in these situations, the law may not always see it that way.
Our best advice for property owners is to document everything if you end up with damage.
