Opinion ID: 2395126
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Is the water flood water?

Text: As to the third certified question, whether the water at issue is flood water, we also answer no. Defendant asserts this Court should define flood water as a great flow of water over what is usually dry land, thus qualifying the water at issue as flood water and excluding the damage from coverage. While South Carolina courts have not defined flood water, Defendant's suggested definition is far too broad. Flood waters are those waters that breach their containment, either as a result of a natural phenomenon or a failure in a man-made system, such as a levee or a dam. See Milbert v. Carl Carbon, Inc. 89 Idaho 471, 406 P.2d 113, 117 (1965) (Flood waters are waters which escape, because of their height, from the confinement of a stream and overflow adjoining territory; implicit in the definition is the element of abnormality.). In either case, there is an element of fortuitousness. See Long Motor Lines v. Home Fire & Marine Ins. Co. of Cal., 220 S.C. 335, 341, 67 S.E.2d 512, 515 (1951) (clarifying that in an insurance policy that defined flood as the rising of streams or navigable waters, rising necessarily connoted an abnormal rising of the waters). We hold that the water in the present case is not flood water because it did not breach containment, but instead it was deliberately channeled and cast upon Plaintiff's land.