HOUSTON - Today, the 14th Court of Appeals reversed a ruling denying the San Jacinto River Authority’s plea to the jurisdiction in taking claims brought over the release of water from Lake Conroe during Hurricane Harvey.
Court records show Edgar Gonzalez and 84 other individuals filed suit against the authority, asserting the following claims: an inverse-condemnation or takings claim under the Texas Constitution; a nuisance claim; and a purported claim for grossly negligent maintenance and operation of the Lake Conroe Dam.
The Gonzalez parties contend that as a result of these record-breaking releases from Lake Conroe, water from the lake caused their homes to flood, resulting in severe property damage.
According to the 14th Court’s opinion, the authority filed a plea to the jurisdiction asserting that its governmental immunity barred all of the Gonzalez parties’ claims. The trial court signed an order, in which it denied the jurisdictional plea only as to the takings claim.
The authority argued that the Gonzalez parties’ homes would have flooded during Harvey even in the hypothetical scenario in which no water was released from Lake Conroe during Harvey (the “No Release Scenario”).
The 14th Court found that the the trial court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over the Gonzalez parties’ takings claims and the other claims, reversing the trial court’s order and render judgment dismissing with prejudice all takings claims; claims against the authority for grossly negligent maintenance and operation of the Lake Conroe Dam; and all nuisance claims.
“Under the applicable standard of review, we conclude that the Gonzalez Parties cannot prove that the Authority’s release of water from Lake Conroe was a proximate cause of any taking or damaging of the Gonzalez Parties’ property because the undisputed evidence proves as a matter of law that each of these properties would have flooded in the No Release Scenario,” the opinion states. “Under the applicable legal standard, we conclude that governmental immunity bars the Other Claims.
“Therefore, the trial court erred in denying the Jurisdictional Plea.”
Appeals case No. 14-20-00414-CV