Peterson v. King County

Defendant, King county, appeals from a judgment entered against it after verdict of a jury.

Interrogatories submitted to the jury disclose that an allowance was made (a) for “the reasonable cost of repairing the damage to plaintiffs’ property” as the result of an earth slide; and (b) for “the depreciation in the market value of plaintiffs’ property.”

Plaintiffs’ property is at the bottom of a steep slope. In 1942, the county built a road across the top of the slope and, in doing so, made a fill about ten feet high and installed a drainage system. A bulkhead was built directly above plaintiffs’…