Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Water coming onto my property from Neighbor

There may be several issues involved. By building a driveway that causes water to flow onto your property the neighbor has liability, especially if their violation of the building code is substantially response for the water flow. Write a letter to the neighbor after checking what the City requirements were when they build the driver, say you have briefly spoken to an attorney who said they have liability and could be successful sued and a jury would be upset at the neighbor if theirs did the same to them and they will know there is insurance coverage so will award more. If they intentionally broke your sand bags they are liable for what ever increase in damages occurred from that [which may be very difficult to prove].

If you are also getting water run off from the street, the City may be liable under inverse condemnation law which does not require the showing of negligence on the part of the public entity but only that their act of putting in the street [or accepting a street from the developer] has changed the flow of water and caused some of it to come onto your property. Say that you do not want to sue the City, but something has to be done, including citing your neighbor for violation of the City requirements [if they have] and requiring them to rebuild the driveway or fix the problem.

Re: Water coming onto my property from Neighbor

In addition to the approaches suggested by Mr. Shers, I would like to point out some basic California water runoff law. The downhill neighbor is required to accept the natural runoff pattern from an uphill neighbor. The downhill guy is not, however, required to accept runoff from uphill that is concentrated in an un-natural flow pattern if the runoff constitutes an unreasonable burden on the downhill property.

This is a civil matter occupying a kind of middle ground between a tort and a private nuisance, and the California law on the subject is judge-made (by Supreme Court decisions) rather than being legislated and codified, but the law is nonetheless pretty clear.

So, among your options, and perhaps your best option, is to sue the neighbor for "unreasonable concentrated discharge of surface waters." The fact that his construction is not up to code is a factor in showing that the discharge is unreasonable.

If the suit is well thought out, its mere filing and service may be enough to prod the neighbor into an out-of-court, pre-trial settlement.

Your lawyer might decide to make the city a co-defendant and broaden the allegations somewhat. It would force them to participate suitably in the problem-solving. Due to the government's partial and limited immunity from suit (stemming from the medieval notion that the king can do no wrong), there are special requirements to be met before suit can be brought, but these can be met by serving the city with a notice of claim.