A homeowner claimed that a road collapsed into a culvert under the road blocking water drainage and resulting in flooding, damage, and loss to her home.

A homeowner claimed that a road collapsed into a culvert under the road blocking water drainage and resulting in flooding, damage, and loss to her home.

A county may be liable for damage to a woman’s home following the collapse of part of a county road and subsequent flooding, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today.

In a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that state law does not limit a political subdivision’s liability for negligently failing to keep a road in repair or remove obstructions based on whose property is damaged. The ruling reverses the Ninth District Court of Appeals, which found that Summit County was immune from liability for damage to the home of Roberta Schlegel, who lived adjacent to the roadway that collapsed. The Ninth District determined that the exception to the immunity of political subdivisions when a roadway is not maintained applies only to motorists or users of a roadway who are injured by a roadway condition.

Writing for the Court majority, Justice Jennifer Brunner stated that the state law contains no such restriction. Schlegel claimed that the public road collapsed into a culvert under the road and the resulting debris blocked stormwater, causing flooding, damage, and loss to her home. R.C. 2744.02(B)(3) states that “political subdivisions are liable for … loss to … property caused by their negligent failure to keep public roads in repair and other negligent failure to remove obstructions from public roads.” The Court found that the law is not limited to losses by users of a roadway.

Justices Patrick F. Fischer, Michael P. Donnelly, and Melody Stewart joined Justice Brunner’s opinion.

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy dissented with an opinion. She noted that the property damage was allegedly caused by a deteriorated, or collapsed, culvert under the road. However, a culvert underneath a roadway is not part of a public road, as that term is defined in R.C. 2744.01(H), Chief Justice Kennedy wrote. Therefore, the dissent concluded that the county is entitled to immunity in this case because the culvert is not part of the road and the property damage that resulted was not caused by the county’s negligent failure to keep the road in repair and free from obstructions.

Justices R. Patrick DeWine and Joseph T. Deters joined the chief justice’s dissent.

Property Owner Sues County Over Damage to Home
In October 2018, Schlegel filed a complaint in the Summit County Common Pleas Court. She alleged that the county was negligent in its upkeep of a culvert, causing a sinkhole in the road. During rains in May 2017, the collapsed road prevented water from properly draining and her Sagamore Hills property and basement flooded, Schlegel said. She was charged $6,636.56 for cleanup and remediation of the water from the basement flooding and was quoted $52,503.42 to complete other repairs.

In November 2019, the county asked the court for summary judgment, arguing it was immune from liability for the damage because it is a political subdivision.

The trial court granted summary judgment in part in March 2020, agreeing with the county that the exception for negligent maintenance of a road did not apply in this case. However, the court did not grant summary judgment on other arguments. In an appeal to the Ninth District, the parties focused on whether the culverts and drainage ditch were a sewer system. The arguments involved whether the county’s maintenance of sewer systems was a proprietary function and whether a different exception to the county’s immunity applied. The Ninth District ruled that Schlegel did not meet her burden of proof in the appeal and that immunity applied for the county.

The case returned to the trial court, which reviewed whether the exception to the county’s immunity based on its maintenance of the road applied, taking into account the Ninth District ruling that the culverts and drainage ditch were a sewer system issue and the county was immune because maintaining it was proprietary. The trial court concluded that Schlegel was not protected by the county’s duty to maintain public roads because to recover she had to be a motorist or user of the road. Schlegel appealed. The Ninth District agreed with the trial court.

Schlegel appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to review if political subdivision liability for failure to maintain roads or remove obstructions, such as in her case, depends on whether the resulting property damage occurs on the roadway itself or to property near the obstructed roadway.

Supreme Court Examines Language of Statute
Government entities are typically immune from liability under R.C. 2744.02(A). However, Justice Brunner explained, there are exceptions listed in R.C. 2744.02(B). In this case, the Court reviewed the exception that states a political subdivision is “liable for injury, death, or loss to person or property caused by [its] negligent failure to keep public roads in repair and other negligent failure to remove obstructions from public roads.”

“Contrary to the trial court’s judgment, R.C. 2744.02(B)(3) contains no limitation restricting the ‘class of persons’ injured or suffering loss to property to ‘motorist[s] or user[s] of the roadway,’” Justice Brunner wrote. “Even the Ninth District expressly acknowledged that the text of R.C. 2744.02(B)(3) ‘does not explicitly indicate that loss must occur on the road itself.’ We agree. … Because this statutory language is plain and unambiguous and conveys a clear and definite meaning, this ends and settles the legal analysis.”   

The opinion noted that a factual question may remain about whether the county’s negligent failure to keep the road in repair resulted in the flooding of and loss to Schlegel’s property. The opinion added that there also are defenses in R.C. 2744.03 that may restore the county’s immunity. Whether immunity can be restored is beyond the scope of what the Supreme Court agreed to review in this case, Justice Brunner stated. Today’s decision returns the case to the trial court to consider these issues.

Exception Not Triggered Because Culverts Are Not Part of Road, Dissent Maintained
In her dissent, Chief Justice Kennedy noted that R.C. 2744.01(H) defines “public roads” to mean “public roads, highways, streets, avenues, alleys, and bridges within a political subdivision.” The dissenting opinion explained that the definition does not include the word “culverts” and that the meaning of the words in the “public roads” definition indicate they are part of the traveled roadway and involve the surface on which vehicles drive.

Therefore, because a culvert is located underneath the traveled roadway, it is outside the law’s meaning of “public road,” the dissent concluded.

“In this case, the deteriorated condition of a culvert — because of the county’s alleged negligence in failing to repair, maintain, or clear it — purportedly led to the flooding of Schlegel’s home,” the chief justice wrote. “However, the culvert is not part of a ‘public road’ as that term is defined in R.C. 2744.01(H). Therefore, the county’s alleged negligence does not trigger the ‘public roads’ exception to political-subdivision immunity, and the county is entitled to summary judgment on claims that it negligently failed to keep the public road in repair and free from obstruction.”

2023-1232. Schlegel v. Summit Cty., Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-5678.

View oral argument video of this case.

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