Title: Glisson v. City of Mobile
Citation: 505 So. 2d 315
Docket Number: N/A
State: Alabama
Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court
Date: February 6, 1987

505 So. 2d 315 (1987)
William J. GLISSON and Joan M. Glisson
v.
CITY OF MOBILE.
85-174.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
February 6, 1987.
Rehearing Denied March 27, 1987.
*316 Vaughan Drinkard, Jr., of Drinkard &amp; Sherling, Mobile, for appellants.
Horace Moon, Jr., and William G. Jones, III, Mobile, for appellee.
SHORES, Justice.
This is an appeal from a judgment based on a jury verdict in favor of the defendant, the City of Mobile.
During the evening of May 5 and the early morning hours of May 6, 1981, the City of Mobile received unusually heavy rainfall. In terms of hourly intensity, the rainfall exceeded the previous record established in 1949 of 3.51 inches. The National Weather Service at Bates Field reported the City of Mobile as receiving 7.96 inches of rain during the 24-hour period ending in the early morning hours of May 6, 1981; however, other measuring stations in town reported rainfall in excess of 13 inches. One expert classified the rain as a 500-year floodone of such magnitude as not likely to recur for 500 years.
The City of Mobile was declared a federal disaster area after suffering some $35,000,000 worth of flood damage to approximately 1500 buildings, including 3 hospitals and 26 businesses.
The Glissons, plaintiffs in this case, own a house about 1500 feet from Eslava Creek in Mobile. On May 5 and 6, 1981, Eslava Creek overflowed its banks and inundated the Glissons' home with flood waters to a height of approximately 37 inches. The Glissons' home had never flooded before, although they had experienced some problems with water getting into the garage, in the yard, and one time into a sunken closet at the rear of the house.
Eslava Creek is a tributary of the Dog River and is in the Dog River drainage basin of the City of Mobile. The Dog River basin drains the southern part of the city, including major shopping, business, and residential districts. At trial, the Glissons sought to prove that the City of Mobile, once it assumed maintenance of Eslava Creek, failed to properly upgrade, expand, and design it so as to accommodate the expanding development of the surrounding areas. This failure, they allege, was the proximate cause of the water damage to their house and property.
After deliberation, the jury returned a verdict for the City. The trial judge denied the Glissons' motion for new trial. This appeal followed.
On appeal, the Glissons argue that error occurred in connection with defense counsel's alleged reference to insurance during his cross-examination of the plaintiff's expert witness, as prohibited by law and court order, and those jury charges given on the act-of-God affirmative defense and the City's duty to maintain Eslava Creek.
The trial court granted the Glissons' August 26, 1985, motion in limine, in which *317 they asked that the defendants be prohibited from discussing the Federal Flood Insurance Administration, flood plains, and/or the existence or availability of flood insurance.
The Glissons contend that the following colloquy between defense counsel and the plaintiff's expert was in contravention of the trial court's ruling:
We agree with the trial judge's ruling in this case. It is clear from the transcript that the flood plain to which defense counsel was referring is that part of the land topography bordering a river, creek, or any other body of water, where water will naturally flow over given an intense enough rainfall. Defense counsel was trying to *319 show that even if the plaintiffs could prove some negligent act by the City in maintaining or failing to maintain Eslava Creek, the Glissons' property would have flooded anyway, even in the absence of the City's negligence, as a result of the extraordinarily heavy rainfall and the location of the Glissons' property in the flood plain.
Insurance was first referred to in the case in an unsolicited answer from the plaintiffs' expert witness. In Barnes v. Tarver, 360 So. 2d 953, 956 (Ala.1978), this Court remarked:
In the case at bar, however, defense counsel also referred to the subject of insurance in his follow-up question to the plaintiff's expert.
We do not believe that the Glissons were prejudiced by defense counsel's remarks. The clear meaning of the statement made by plaintiff's expert and the defense counsel in his followup questions was that since the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had not designated the Eslava Creek area as a flood zone, there was no insurance available. It does not appear that the jury could have been left with the impression that the Glissons had already been compensated by insurance for their losses.
As this court said in American Pamcor, Inc. v. Evans, 288 Ala. 416, 419-20, 261 So. 2d 739, 742 (1972):
Defense counsel simply did not cross that line in the case at bar.
We also find that the Glissons' objections to the jury charges are without merit.
The jury charges in issue can be put into two groups, those dealing with the act-of-God affirmative defense and those dealing with the City of Mobile's duty to maintain Eslava Creek.
As to the first group, the crux of the Glissons' argument is that these charges fail to specify that the City of Mobile could be liable for negligence in maintaining the creek even though the rainfall was the immediate cause of the damage, if the rainfall was foreseeable or precedented and not an intervening independent agency producing the injury. In reviewing the defendant's requested charges No. 42,[1] No. 43,[2] No. 45,[3] No. 47,[4]*320 and No. 48,[5] we find that each one is a correct statement of the law as applicable to this case. The charges are not confusing and do not leave one with the impression that because the rainfall was the immediate cause of damage, the City of Mobile could not be liable for its negligence.
Defendant's requested charges No. 26[6] and No. 28[7] deal with the City of Mobile's duty in this particular case. Charge No. 26 is a statement of law from Kennedy v. City of Montgomery, 423 So. 2d 187 (Ala.1982), a case in which this court addressed a city's duty to maintain a drainage system. It is a correct statement of law. We are not convinced that it served to confuse or mislead the jury.
The Glissons' objection to charge No. 28 is that it seemingly gives the City of Mobile absolute immunity whenever public improvements such as new streets and buildings cause an increased flow of surface water onto adjacent private property. We disagree. Under charge No. 28, the increased flow of surface water must arise wholly from surface improvements. If the City of Mobile was negligent in maintaining Eslava Creek, then the increased flow of water did not arise wholly from changes in surrounding property. Consequently, if the jury believed that the City of Mobile acted negligently, they could have found against the city on this charge.
There appearing no merit in the plaintiffs' arguments on appeal, the judgment of the trial court is due to be affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
TORBERT, C.J., and JONES, ADAMS and STEAGALL, JJ., concur.
[1]  "If you are reasonably satisfied from the evidence that the Plaintiffs' damage was a result of an overflow of Plaintiffs' land from waters of a creek caused, not by Defendant's negligence, but entirely by natural causes in the form of extraordinarily heavy rains, and that the rains were so extraordinary and unprecedented as to be Acts of God, then you cannot find for the Plaintiffs and your verdict should be in favor of the Defendant."
[2]  "Even if you are reasonably satisfied from the evidence in this case that the City was negligent, if such negligence concurred with an extraordinary flood or rainfall, the City of Mobile is relieved from liability if the flow is so voluminous in character that it would of itself have produced the injury independently of such negligence. In other words, if the superior force would have produced the same damage whether or not the City had been negligent, its negligence is not deemed the cause of the injury."
[3]  "If you are reasonably satisfied from the evidence that any prior negligent act by the Defendant merely created a condition or gave rise to an occasion and after creation of said condition an intervening independent agency produced the injury, the parties guilty of the first negligent act would not be liable because their negligence was but the remote cause of the injury and not the proximate cause of the injury."
[4]  "However negligent a person may have been in some particular, that person is liable only to those who may have been injured by reason of such negligence as proximate causation. Where some independent agency intervened and was the immediate cause of the injury, the party negligent in the first instance is not liable."
[5]  "If you are reasonably satisfied from the evidence that between the alleged negligent act of the Defendant and the injury, there occurred [an] independent, intervening, unforeseeable event, the causal connection between the alleged negligence and the injury is broken and you must find for the Defendant."
[6]  "The city has a duty to maintain a drainage ditch in such a condition as to cause it not to overflow (1) if the city has undertaken control of the drainage system for the plaintiffs' properties and (2) if water from the city's drainage systemrather than natural drainage of surface watercaused the flooding problems."
[7]  "A city is not liable to a property owner for the increased flow of surface water over or onto his property, arising wholly from the changes in the character of the surface produced by the opening of streets, building of houses, and the like, in the ordinary and regular course of the expansion of the city."