On Thursday, Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Mark T. Boonstra, the presiding judge over Michigan’s Court of Claims, ruled that the citizens of Flint, Michigan, have the right to sue the state and state officials because of the water crisis there.
According to Boonstra, the residents of Flint had more than proved the facts of their case, which Boonstra described as “so arbitrary in a constitutional sense, as to shock the conscience.”
What’s more, Boonstra said that the argument that Flint residents had not filed suit within six months of the crisis was “unpersuasive.”
–Flint hit with bacterial illness as residents avoid city water–
“Were the court to accept defendants’ position, it would have to find that the plaintiffs’ claims are barred because they should have filed suit (or notice) at a time when the state itself was stating that it lacked any reason to know that the water supply was contaminated. The court is disinclined to so find,” Boonstra wrote.
“The allegations are sufficient, if proven, to allow a conclusion that the state actors’ actions were a substantial cause of the decline of the property’s value and that the state abused its power through affirmative actions directly aimed at the property, i.e. continuing to supply each water user with corrosive and contaminated water with the knowledge of the adverse consequences associated with being supplied such water,” he added.