Little Valley Fire update
The Little Valley Fire cases involve two essential claims, one for tort and one for taking of property. The takings claims are stayed while the Nevada Supreme Court sorts out whether an escaped burn is a taking or a tort. Except, the question has just been made a little more complicated. A Reno jury found the State liable for gross negligence in conducting the burn. This means that a jury has ruled that the conduct was absolutely a tort…. which is sort of the State’s position in the Nevada Supreme Court inverse condemnation case.
Now, the Nevada Supreme Court will need to determine whether the conduct can be BOTH a taking and a tort, or whether one excludes the other. In our neutral amicus brief, we requested that the Court engage in decent analysis to parse out the differences between tort liability and inverse condemnation liability. I am exceedingly curious to see how this plays out. One way or another, we should see the Nevada Supreme Court begin to refine its jurisprudence.
On a related note, the State may have managed to cause another escaped fire… this time entirely by accident when a helicopter crashed. The cause of the fire is currently unknown, but started in the area of the crash and appears to have started after the crash. As they say, post hoc ergo propter hoc. Or, I guess here, post hoc ergo copter hoc. [Thank you, I’ll be here all night].
I bring this up not because this has apparently become TakingFire.com, but because the State’s essential argument against taking liability in the Little Valley Fire case is that property destruction caused by an accident (regardless of culpability for negligence, etc.) is just a tort and cannot be a taking. The helicopter crash fire does not appear to have destroyed any structures, but if it does (the fire has grown to 40,000 acres as of this writing), then the question becomes, what’s the difference between the fire in Little Valley and the helicopter fire?
From the viewpoint of a person who’s lost their home… probably not much. From the viewpoint of the law? We’ll see.