Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Question: can we recoup the cost to reconnect our sewer lateral to the city main from the previous owners of the house next door that disconnected it when they put in their new sewer lateral?

Backstory:

We bought our home Aug. 2014 shortly thereafter the sewer started backing up. Over the last two months we've had a couple of plumbers out. The first said we had a broken pipe(but his company doesn't install new one). Our lateral sewer line goes out our back yard and then turns and connects with neighbors to go to city connection. Talked with the owner of that house and explained the issue(as she was putting up for rent signs ), she said they replaced her lateral a year or so before, by the end of the week after talking with her they put the house on the market for sale. We needed permission to go on their property to fix ours. Called and talked with the real estate agent and didn't get anywhere. so finally we are completely backed up in our house, the house was in closing next door, talked with new owners and got the city building inspector to issue a permit to dig. (there is a sewer line easement in place). Dig up the area our plumber believes there is a break and low and behold the previous owner(and/or the plumbing company they hired) disconnected our sewer line connection and ran their new line into our hookup for the city. So for the last year and a half to two years the sewer has been draining into the ground. City building inspector gave the permission to reconnect the line into the neighbors line and to the city main. so our actual shared line is only about 10 feet now.

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