United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________

TROY ALFORD, KATHY ALFORD, HAROLD 

ANGELO, LUCY BARWICK, THOMAS BEASLEY, 

SANDRA BEASLEY, LARRY BLACKWELL, JOHN 

BRINKMAN, ANGELA BRITT, STEPHANIE COOK, 

JAMES COX, JOHN FEMINELLA, CHARLES 

FRANKLIN, GERALD GELSTON, JACK GOODSON, 

CHRIS HAMMACK, GUS HARRISON, CLAUDE 

HUDSON, SHERMAN HULL, OLLIE HULL, 

LAMARR JOSEPH, WILLIAM KITCHENS, KEN 

KLAUS, KIM KOPPMAN, GLENN LECOMPTE, 

FAYE LITTLE, JAMES LUKE, PATTY MCKAY, 

GEORGE MCMILLIN, WILLIAM MCRIGHT, 

CHARLES MULLINS, BILLY NICHOLS, RAYMOND 

PALMER, SANDRA PALMER, LOU PARKER, 

DONALD REDDEN, DOROTHY REDDEN, ALBERT 

ROBERSON, JOHNNY ROLAND, KEITH RUSHING, 

GEORGE SILLS, HUEL SILLS, RONALD WILSON,

EAGLE LAKE VIEW, LLC, JOHN AND JANE DOES 

1-100, M. JAMES CHANEY, JR.,

Plaintiffs-Appellees

v.

UNITED STATES,

Defendant-Appellant

______________________

2019-1678

______________________

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 1 Filed: 06/19/2020
2 ALFORD v. UNITED STATES

Appeal from the United States Court of Federal Claims 

in Nos. 1:14-cv-00304-LAS, 1:14-cv-01120-LAS, Senior 

Judge Loren A. Smith.

______________________

Decided: June 19, 2020

______________________

SHELDON G. ALSTON, Brunini, Grantham, Grower & 

Hewes, PLLC, Jackson, MS, argued for plaintiffs-appellees 

Troy Alford, Kathy Alford, Harold Angelo, Lucy Barwick, 

Thomas Beasley, Sandra Beasley, Larry Blackwell, John 

Brinkman, Angela Britt, Stephanie Cook, James Cox, John 

Feminella, Charles Franklin, Gerald Gelston, Jack Goodson, Chris Hammack, Gus Harrison, Claude Hudson, Sherman Hull, Ollie Hull, Lamarr Joseph, William Kitchens, 

Ken Klaus, Kim Koppman, Glenn Lecompte, Faye Little, 

James Luke, Patty McKay, George McMillin, William 

McRight, Charles Mullins, Billy Nichols, Raymond Palmer, 

Sandra Palmer, Lou Parker, Donald Redden, Dorothy Redden, Albert Roberson, Johnny Roland, Keith Rushing, 

George Sills, Huel Sills, Ronald Wilson, Eagle Lake View, 

LLC, John and Jane Does 1-100. Also represented by 

ROBERT LANE BOBO, ROBERT RICHARD CIRILLI, JR.; SCOTT 

H. ANGSTREICH, JACOB HARTMAN, DANIEL SEVERSON, Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, P.L.L.C., Washington, DC. 

 BARRETT BLAKE TELLER, Teller, Hassell & Hopson, 

LLP, Vicksburg, MS, for plaintiff-appellee M. James 

Chaney, Jr. 

 JOHN EMAD ARBAB, Environment and Natural Resources Division, United States Department of Justice, 

Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellant. Also 

represented by ERIKA KRANZ, JEFFREY B. CLARK, ERIC 

GRANT. 

 ______________________

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 2 Filed: 06/19/2020
ALFORD v. UNITED STATES 3

Before DYK, SCHALL, and O’MALLEY, Circuit Judges.

DYK, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiffs, appellees in this court, own properties 

surrounding Eagle Lake in Mississippi. In 2011, the Army 

Corps of Engineers (“Corps”) raised the water level of Eagle 

Lake to prevent a nearby levee from breaching. The plaintiffs’ properties were damaged as a result of the water level 

increase, but the damages sustained were less than the 

damages to the plaintiffs’ properties that would have resulted from a levee breach. The plaintiffs sued the government in the United States Court of Federal Claims 

(“Claims Court”). The Claims Court found that the government was liable and awarded the plaintiffs $168,000 in 

compensatory damages. The government appeals. We reverse the Claims Court’s judgment because the relative 

benefits doctrine bars liability.

BACKGROUND

Eagle Lake is an oxbow lake near Vicksburg, Mississippi. The water levels in the lake are controlled by the 

Muddy Bayou Control Structure (“the Control Structure”), 

which is a component of the Corps’ Mississippi River flood 

control program (the “Mississippi River and Tributaries 

Project”). The operation of the Control Structure in normal 

conditions resulted in predictable water levels in Eagle 

Lake. The plaintiffs own various properties that surround 

the lake. The predictable water levels of Eagle Lake allowed them to build structures such as piers, boat houses, 

and docks on the lakeshore.

In 2010, the Corps determined that the presence of 

“sand boils”—voids in the sand that form due to pressurized or fast-flowing water migrating through the land-facing side of a levee—threatened the stability of the nearby 

Mississippi River Mainline Levee, a component of the same 

flood-control program as the Control Structure.

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 3 Filed: 06/19/2020
4 ALFORD v. UNITED STATES

Unusually wet weather in 2011 exacerbated this issue. 

On April 25, 2011, the Corps declared an emergency. The 

Corps determined that the rise in nearby water levels was 

threatening the structural integrity of the levee and “projected that the likelihood of breach was over 95%.” J.A. 2. 

The Corps decided to flood Eagle Lake above 90 feet to reduce water pressures along the levee. The government 

knew that the increased water levels would cause damage 

to the plaintiffs’ properties. Id. (“A decision was made to 

raise the [water level of Eagle] Lake, knowing plaintiffs’ 

properties would be damaged.”). As a result of that action, 

which the plaintiffs characterize as “buil[ding] a water 

berm,” Appellee’s Br. 38, the levee did not breach. The water level remained elevated for three months. Thereafter, 

the government built a permanent berm to reinforce the 

levee.

A breach of the levee would have resulted in widespread flooding affecting “about a million acres and possibly between four thousand to six thousand homes and 

businesses.” J.A. 2. The flooding would have damaged and 

adversely affected the plaintiffs’ properties. According to 

an expert report submitted by the government, the “hypothetical water levels” would have resulted in such extensive damage to the plaintiffs’ properties that, to repair each 

property, “the main residence must be gutted and demolished back to the original wood stick framing.” J.A. 2846. 

The damage to the plaintiffs’ properties from a levee breach 

would have exceeded the damage caused by raising the 

lake water levels.

The plaintiffs sued the government in the Claims 

Court, seeking compensation for their damaged properties 

under the theory that the raising of the water level of Eagle 

Lake was a government taking. The government raised 

four defenses. First, it asserted that the plaintiffs were not 

entitled to damages under the relative benefits doctrine. 

The government’s argument was that the plaintiffs were 

better off as a result of the Corps’ actions. If the 

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 4 Filed: 06/19/2020
ALFORD v. UNITED STATES 5

government had not raised the water level of Eagle Lake, 

the levee would almost certainly have breached, and the 

plaintiffs would have suffered more damages to the same 

properties. Second, the government asserted that plaintiffs failed to prove causation under St. Bernard Parish

Government v. United States, 887 F.3d 1354, 1362 (Fed. 

Cir. 2018), because the plaintiffs had failed to establish 

what would have happened if the government had not 

acted at all. Third, the government argued that the doctrine of necessity precluded government liability because 

the risk of a breach presented an “imminent danger and an 

actual emergency.” J.A. 72 (quoting TrinCo Inv. Co. v. 

United States, 722 F.3d 1375, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2013)). Finally, the government argued that the plaintiffs failed to 

show that a taking had occurred under the multi-factor test 

for government-induced floods articulated in Arkansas 

Game & Fish Commission v. United States, 568 U.S. 23 

(2012).

The Claims Court rejected the government’s arguments, holding that it was “clear in this case that the government knowingly took action that destroyed some of the 

plaintiffs’ property.” J.A. 2. With respect to the relative 

benefits doctrine, the Claims Court acknowledged that it 

was “certainly true that [the levee and Control Structure] 

benefitted the plaintiffs,” and that “in the hypothetical 

world where the breach [of the levee] occurred, the plaintiffs would have been far worse off.” J.A. 3. Despite these 

facts, the Claims Court held that the “hypothetical situation” of a levee breach was irrelevant to the issue of liability. Id. The Claims Court awarded the plaintiffs $168,000 

in damages for the diminution in the fair market value of 

their properties but denied certain plaintiffs’ requests for 

consequential (lost profits and loss of use and enjoyment) 

damages.

The government appeals, and we have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(3).

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 5 Filed: 06/19/2020
6 ALFORD v. UNITED STATES

DISCUSSION

We review the Claims Court’s legal conclusions de novo 

and its factual findings for clear error. Hendler v. United 

States, 175 F.3d 1374, 1378–79 (Fed. Cir. 1999).

We need not reach the government’s arguments concerning causation, the doctrine of necessity, or application 

of the Arkansas Game & Fish standard because we conclude that the relative benefits doctrine forecloses liability. 

That doctrine is closely related to, but distinct from, the 

issue of causation. 

The relative benefits doctrine was first articulated by 

the Supreme Court in United States v. Sponenbarger, 308 

U.S. 256 (1939), which involved the same flood control program at issue in this case. In Sponenbarger, the plaintiff 

alleged that the government’s construction plan for a floodway involved an “intentional, additional, occasional flooding, [that] damag[ed] and destroy[ed]” the plaintiff’s land. 

Id. at 260. The Court first noted that the 1928 Act that 

authorized the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project 

“accepted the conception . . . that levees alone would not 

protect the [Mississippi] valley from floods.” Id. at 261. 

The construction of floodways was therefore necessary to 

“limit to predetermined points . . . escapes of floodwaters 

from the main channel.” Id. at 262. 

The Court noted that the district court had found that 

the floodway in question had “always been a natural floodway,” id. at 262–63, and held that no taking had occurred 

because “[t]he Government ha[d] not subjected [the plaintiff]’s land to any additional flooding, above what would occur if the Government had not acted,” id. at 266. “[T]he 

Fifth Amendment does not make the Government an insurer that the evil of floods be stamped out universally before the evil can be attacked at all.” Id. “Enforcement of a 

broad flood control program does not involve a taking 

merely because it will result in an increase in the volume 

or velocity of otherwise inevitably destructive floods, where 

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 6 Filed: 06/19/2020
ALFORD v. UNITED STATES 7

the program measured in its entirety greatly reduces the 

general flood hazards, and actually is highly beneficial to a 

particular tract of land.” Id.

Our predecessor court, the Court of Claims, applied the 

rule announced in Sponenbarger in Ark-Mo Farms, Inc. v. 

United States, 530 F.2d 1384 (Ct. Cl. 1976), to reject a 

plaintiff’s takings claim when the evidence showed “that 

the [government] project had in fact decreased peaks, duration and frequency of floods at the [plaintiff’s property].” 

Id. at 1386. Again in Accardi v. United States, 599 F.2d 

423 (Ct. Cl. 1979), the Court of Claims reiterated this principle, concluding that when the “plaintiffs have wholly 

failed to show that [the government]’s construction or operation of [an irrigation project] subjected their lands to 

any additional flooding above what would have [otherwise] 

occurred,” “there has been no taking of [the] plaintiffs’ 

property.” Id. at 429–30; see also Bartz v. United States, 

633 F.2d 571, 578 (Ct. Cl. 1980).

In Hendler, our court explained that the relative benefits doctrine “takes its force from the underlying equitable 

principle that the Government’s obligation is, to the extent 

possible following the Government’s intrusion, to restore 

the landowner to the position he was in absent any government action.” Hendler, 175 F.3d at 1382. “[I]n the flooding 

cases such as Bartz, in which dams are built to control natural flooding, the result, even though it denies recovery for 

property actually taken, is seen as not being ultimately inequitable.” Id. at 1383.

The cases discussing the relative benefits doctrine examine the overall benefits of the government action with 

respect to the particular property as compared to the detriment that was suffered. See Sponenbarger, 308 U.S. at 

266 (considering the “benefits [of the governmental activities] when measured in the whole”); Accardi, 599 F.2d at 

429–30 (considering the benefit to the plaintiffs’ land by 

comparing the existence of a government project, a river 

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 7 Filed: 06/19/2020
8 ALFORD v. UNITED STATES

division, to “what would have occurred in consequence of 

the severe . . . storm [event at issue] had [the government] 

not constructed the division at all”); Hendler, 175 F.3d at 

1381–82 (considering the government’s “investigat[ion], by 

way of testing and sampling, [groundwater] contamination,” was a benefit “inure[d] to [the] plaintiffs because of 

its peculiar relation to their land,” and that the trial court 

could “offset[] this . . . benefit against the value of the easements [that the government had allegedly] taken” when 

carrying out the project).1

In this case the parties have taken a narrower view, 

focusing not on the overall benefits of the government project on the plaintiffs’ properties, but on only the benefits to 

the plaintiffs’ properties from the government’s 2011 decision to raise the water level of Eagle Lake. Even assuming 

that this narrow focus was correct, the plaintiffs make no 

claim that they would have been better off if the government had allowed the levee to breach. The government’s 

uncontested evidence showed that, in the event of a breach 

of the levee, the water level of Eagle Lake would have far 

exceeded that caused by the Corps’ intentional flooding. 

Each of the plaintiffs suffered considerably less damage 

due to the government’s planned flooding of Eagle Lake 

1 The cases make clear that our inquiry must be focused on the particular property owned by the plaintiffs 

and claimed to have been damaged. See Sponenbarger, 308 

U.S. at 266 (focusing its inquiry on the benefits to the “particular tract of land” at issue); Accardi, 599 F.2d at 429–30 

(focusing its relative benefits analysis on the “plaintiffs’ 

real properties”); Hendler, 175 F.3d at 1382–83 (explaining 

that the relative benefits doctrine balances “the harm 

caused [to] the landowner by the Government’s . . . action 

[with] any special benefits that happen as a result to accrue 

to the [landowner’s] land”).

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 8 Filed: 06/19/2020
ALFORD v. UNITED STATES 9

than if the levee had breached.2 The Claims Court expressly found that the plaintiffs had directly benefitted 

from the government’s action. The Claims Court found 

that it was “certainly true” that the flood protection offered 

by the levee and Control Structure “benefitted the plaintiffs.” J.A. 3. Absent government intervention, “the likelihood of [a] breach [of the levee] was over 95%.” J.A. 2. “If 

the levee had broken,” the “[p]laintiffs’ propert[ies] would 

have been totally inundated” and would have “suffered 

more serious damage than they actually did.” J.A. 3. 

“[T]he plaintiffs would have been far worse off . . . .” Id. 

Under the Claims Court’s findings, the benefit of the government action, with respect to preventing a breach of the 

levee, outweighed the damage caused by the government’s 

flooding of Eagle Lake.

The Claims Court, however, refused to apply the relative benefits doctrine, reasoning that it was inappropriate 

to “apply[] a hypothetical situation to discount the harm 

plaintiffs suffered in the real world.” Id. There is no basis 

for refusing to consider “the hypothetical world where the 

breach [of the levee] occurred.” Id. Courts applying the 

relative benefits doctrine have consistently considered 

what would have occurred absent government action. See, 

2 The Claims Court awarded Mr. MacNealy, whose 

property suffered the most damage, $79,000 for diminution 

in the fair market value of his property based on the testimony of the government’s expert, Mr. Parker. The record 

shows that Mr. MacNealy’s damages would have been 

$147,000 if the levee had breached. Trial Transcript at 

1582, 1594, Alford v. United States, 141 Fed. Cl. 421 (2019)

(No. 1:14-cv-003040-LAS), ECF No. 83. The other plaintiffs would have been even worse off. For example, the 

Chaney property would have suffered a $208,000 loss if the 

levee had breached, as opposed to the $25,000 in damages 

due to the government’s action. Id. at 1560. 

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 9 Filed: 06/19/2020
10 ALFORD v. UNITED STATES

e.g., Sponenbarger, 308 U.S. at 266 (“The Government has 

not subjected respondent’s land to any additional flooding, 

above what would occur if the Government had not 

acted . . . .”); Accardi, 599 F.2d at 429–30 (noting that the 

plaintiffs had failed to compare the government’s action to 

“what would have occurred . . . had [the government] not 

[acted] . . . at all”); Hendler, 175 F.3d at 1382 (noting that 

the relative benefits doctrine “takes its force from the . . . 

equitable principle that the Government’s obligation is . . . 

to restore the landowner to the position he was in absent 

any government action”). Nor is the relative benefits doctrine rendered inapplicable because the government’s action was intentional, and the government was aware that 

its actions would have damaged the plaintiffs’ properties. 

Sponenbarger, 308 U.S. at 260 (finding no taking even 

though the plaintiff had alleged that the government’s construction plan involved an “intentional . . . flooding” of her 

land). The Claims Court erred by failing to consider what 

would have happened if the government had allowed the 

levee to breach.

The Claims Court found it significant that the benefits 

to the general public were substantial. The relative benefits doctrine does not compare the benefits conferred on the 

community at large to the damage suffered by the plaintiffs. While the purpose of the Takings Clause is “grounded 

upon a conception of the injustice in favoring the public as 

against an individual property owner,” Id. at 266, the relative benefits doctrine requires determining whether the 

burden on the plaintiffs’ property is outweighed by the benefits conferred on that property. The benefit to the community at large has nothing to do with the relative benefits 

comparison.

The Claims Court also suggested that it would not consider the benefits of the levee and Control Structure because, “[i]f the benefits citizens get from the federal 

government are to be put on the scale in a taking case, the 

citizen would always lose” because “[g]overnment 

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 10 Filed: 06/19/2020
ALFORD v. UNITED STATES 11

programs benefit all citizens in various ways.” J.A. 3. 

There is no suggestion that all government benefits must 

be considered under the relative benefits doctrine. The relative benefits doctrine considers only government actions 

directed to the particular property at issue and considers 

only government activities directed to mitigating the type 

of problem that caused the damage. See Sponenbarger, 308 

U.S. at 265–66 (explaining that the government had not 

subjected the plaintiff’s land to “additional flooding” and 

“the same floods and the same damages would occur had 

the Government undertaken no work of any kind”). The 

levee and Control Structure are directed to the same type 

of flooding injury that the plaintiffs in this case suffered. 

The general benefits of having a federal government, such 

as the “military keep[ing] the region from being overrun by 

foreign governments,” J.A. 3, are not the types of benefits 

relevant to the relative benefits analysis in the flood control context.

Under the circumstances here, the relative benefits 

doctrine compels a conclusion that there was no liability: 

the plaintiffs’ properties would have been “far worse off” 

and “suffered more serious damage” if the government had 

not acted. Id. We need not reach the government’s remaining arguments. The judgment of the Claims Court is reversed.

REVERSED

Case: 19-1678 Document: 65 Page: 11 Filed: 06/19/2020