Allen v. Morris Building Co.

In 1945 the plaintiffs purchased a home, built, in 1940, in a flat area. It had no neighboring houses. Its front yard sloped 7 inches from house to street. No difficulty with surface waters was experienced on the premises at that time.

In 1954 defendants started developing the area around it, grading lots extending for some distance on either side of plaintiffs’ property. They caused the lots north of plaintiffs’ to be graded with a downward slope south to plaintiffs’ premises and those south of plaintiffs’ with a downward slope north to plaintiffs’ premises. Defendants built houses on many of…