Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Georgia

Happy New Year:

My question. The house I purchased nearly 10 years ago sat on about 2 acres. There was another smaller house on the land. My next door neighbor purchased that house and most of the land prior to my purchasing my house. They wanted to be sure that whoever purchased my house did not put renters in the seperate house that sits on the property close to them.

My neighbor has done a great job with the property in fact it looks like a park. However, as he developed his land he dug up much of the property destroying run off, irrigation and plumbing for my house. The result, we have flooding everytime it rains hard. After the most recent hard rain I had to call a plumber because I did not know why my basement continued to flood. We were able to find a run off that stopped under his fence. As I stood talking to him with my plumber, I discovered he had torn all of the run off, out. He did not tell me when he did it, he did not warn me. There was no heads up from him at all. Had we not approached him, I would have never known. I am going to have to spend a large amount of money to get the run off established on my side of the fence since he destroyed my plumbing.

Do I have any legal recourse. Can he share the cost of or bare the cost of this expensive procedure? I do not want to fall out with my neighbor. We have been pleasent over the years. However, I feel disrespected. And dont need to spend $3000 plus dollars.

Thank you.

Steven


Asked on 12/27/11, 8:33 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Scott Riddle Law Office of Scott B. Riddle, LLC

Many more facts are necessary. A person can't alter the natural flow and flood a neighbor, but generally you can't concentrate the flow and pour it on a neighbor, which from your post appears to possibly be the case. If you want to turn it into a legal issue, you can count on two things. One, a bill likely larger than $3,000 and two, should you involve your neighbor, a completely different relationship going forward. And you still will have to fix the problem.

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Answered on 12/28/11, 3:23 pm


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