Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Spa owner sues Appleton over flooding

By: Beth Kevit, [email protected]//July 28, 2014//

Spa owner sues Appleton over flooding

By: Beth Kevit, [email protected]//July 28, 2014//

Listen to this article

An Appleton spa owner who alleges the city rejected her claim for reimbursement after a water main broke and flooded her business is now taking her case to federal court.

Lacy Hardy, who owns Sunflower Spa LLC, 1024 S. Olde Oneida St., is suing for at least $62,552.71 in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. She said a water main uphill from her business broke around 5:30 a.m. May 23, 2013, and dumped about 360,000 gallons into her building.

“The city just said, pretty much, ‘File a claim,’” she said. “They didn’t do anything.”

The city shut off the flow by about 7 a.m. May 23, she said, but by then about 16 inches of water filled the spa’s 2,500-square-foot first floor. According to Hardy’s lawsuit, filed July 21, the water main was installed around 1929.

Hardy said the city still has not told her why the main broke.

“There’s been other breaks in the area,” she said, “and there also was a lot of construction going on with a bridge being replaced, and we could feel all that vibration in our building. So who knows?”

Paula Vandehey, the city’s director of public works, said city crews fixed the break as soon as they could. She declined to comment further on the case.

Appleton has until Aug. 12 to respond to Hardy’s claim.

The flooding destroyed the spa’s floor, Hardy said, and forced her to close for two weeks. During that time, she said, her 15 employees were out of work, some customers who lost appointments decided not to reschedule, and she hired contractors to replace the floor and prevent mold from growing.

Hardy said she filed a claim with the city to recover money for repairs and compensation for her lost business, but the city rejected her request, claiming not to be responsible.

That failure prompted her to file the federal lawsuit, Hardy said.

John Thiel, an attorney with Appleton-based John E. Thiel Law Office LLC, who is representing Hardy, said he will argue the city temporarily seized her property when water from the broken main flooded the building. He said he will rely on a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave property owners the right to sue municipalities for temporarily seizing land without offering compensation.

“When the city’s only response to this person in their time of need was to hand them a notice-of-claim piece of paper,” Thiel said, “and not do anything to help them clean up, that’s not good government.”

He said he has prepared a list of water-main breaks that he believes will prove the city has neglected its infrastructure.

Jan Smokowicz, a Milwaukee assistant city attorney who is not involved in the Appleton lawsuit but who has experience litigating water and sewer main cases, said a municipality is not always liable for damages. To be liable, he said, the municipality first must have known a main was in danger of breaking and then must have failed to repair or maintain the infrastructure. If the municipality did not know a main was defective or attempted to repair a failing main, he said, it cannot be held liable for property damage if the main were to break.

Hardy wants the money, she said, but also wants to draw attention to the aging portions of Appleton’s water-main system and the potential problems they could cause for residences or other businesses.

“I don’t want that to happen to somebody else,” she said, “and have the city say, ‘Oh well, that’s not our fault.’”

Polls

Should Steven Avery be granted a new evidentiary hearing?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Legal News

See All Legal News

WLJ People

Sea all WLJ People

Opinion Digests