In The City of Mountain Brook v. Miller, 2026 WL 1840644 (June 26, 2026), the Court (Stewart, C.J., and Wise, Cook, McCool, JJ., concurring; Sellers and Parker, JJ., concurring specially, with opinions; and Shaw, Bryan, and Mendheim, JJ., concurring in the result) reverses the Jefferson Circuit Court’s judgment for the Millers and remands the case for summary judgment to be entered for the City of Mountain Brook, holding that the City did not owe an individual duty to the Millers to upgrade its stormwater-drainage system.
In May 2023, the Millers home in Mountain Brook flooded just two weeks after they purchased it, resulting in over $80,000 in damages. *1. The Millers alleged the City’s stormwater drainage systems became undersized over time due to increased development and that the flooding of their home was due to stormwater overflowing through the drain inlets in the City’s drainpipes. Id. at *1-2. The Millers sued for negligent maintenance, nuisance, and trespass, alleging that the City had been aware of the drainage deficiencies but failed to upgrade the system. Id. at *1. The circuit court granted summary judgment for the Millers and awarded $80,441.15 in damages and also entered a permanent injunction prohibiting the City from further flooding the Millers’ property. Id.
On appeal, the Court reverses. The Court distinguishes between a municipality’s duty to avoid negligently designing, constructing, or maintaining a drainage system it elects to build and the discretionary governmental decision whether to enlarge or upgrade that system. Id. at *11-13. Relying on prior Alabama precedent recognizing that municipalities have no duty to construct drainage systems in the first instance, the Court determines that municipalities likewise owe no duty to make infrastructure upgrade decisions because such decisions involve legislative and policy judgments, including balancing competing public interests, engineering recommendations, budgetary constraints, and downstream impacts. Id. at *11-13, 17. Because the undisputed evidence showed that the flooding resulted from the drainage system's limited capacity rather than negligent maintenance, such as blocked or defective pipes, the Court concludes that the Millers' claims were based solely on the City's failure to upgrade the system. Id. Because the claims were based on failure to upgrade and no duty is owed to upgrade the system, the Court reverses the judgment for the Millers and remands the case for summary judgment to be entered for the City of Mountain Brook.