QUESTION
The city water main broke, which damaged my lawn. The city said they would repair, now they won't. what do I do?
Asked on Aug 07th, 2018 on Litigation - Wisconsin
More details to this question:
The city water main broke in 3 places in the street. Due to the amount of water, the water came up in the area of least resistance, which was my lawn. The water dept. said they would repair my lawn due to the fact that it was their water main that broke. Now they refuse to repair my lawn properly. In fact, they have caused even more damage to my lawn while they attempted to repair my lawn. Now they are saying they are "not allowed to go on private property" when I am asking them to repair my lawn. I am not sure what to do next. It seems that attorneys are afraid to take on this claim against the city. It should be mentioned, because of their main break, it also caused close to $10,000 damage to my basement, which has been repaired. When I filed a claim with the City to recoup my $500 deductible, they refused to compensate me.
1 ANSWER
4 Awards
The first thing you will need to do is file a proper written notice of claim per 893.80 of the Wisconsin statutes. Since this is a claim against a municipality, you are required to personally serve the written notice on the proper governmental entity and any of it's employees that you may be aware of who were in charge or caused the damage. The written notice of claim must be filed within 120 days of the occurrence or the claim could be barred. If the claim is disallowed by serving you a formal notice of disallowance, it shortens the statute of limitations to 6 months to file a lawsuit, from the date of the disallowance. You most likely whether there is a formal disallowance or not, have to file a lawsuit to try to collect on the damages caused at your property. This assumes, of course, that you have a valid legitimate legal claim against the city or municipality for the water main breaking. Things break all the time. That doesn't necessarily equate to the city being negligent.
Answered on Sep 01st, 2018 at 7:51 AM
David B. Karp Karp & Iancu, S.C. 933 North Mayfair Road #300 Milwaukee, WI 53226 414 453 0800 dbk@karplawfirm.com www.karplawfirm.com