WISE BUSINESS FORMS INCORPORATED v. FORSYTH COUNTY

Wise Business Forms, headquartered in Forsyth County, sued Forsyth County and the Georgia Department of Transportation, claiming a road-widening project completed in 2000 sent too much stormwater through a pipe under its property. Wise said the pipe eroded over years and a sinkhole appeared on its property in 2016. Forsyth County and DOT argued the four-year deadline (statute of limitation) for suing had already expired because the harm started back in 2000. A superior court and the Court of Appeals of Georgia agreed the case was too late, reasoning that the increased water flow was obvious in 2000 when the road project finished. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed. It held that at this early stage, before any evidence was gathered, the courts had to accept Wise's claim that the real harm (the sinkhole and pipe erosion) was hidden until 2016. The court reversed and sent the case back for further proceedings.

When a permanent nuisance causes multiple harms, some immediately observable and some hidden until later, the four-year statute of limitation does not automatically start running when the nuisance is created; at the motion-to-dismiss stage, a plaintiff's allegations that harm was hidden until a later date must be accepted as true.

The ruling affects landowners and local governments across Georgia dealing with drainage or infrastructure projects: it clarifies that lawsuits over slowly developing property damage, like erosion or sinkholes, may not be time-barred just because the underlying construction happened years earlier and some effects were visible then.

Reversed and remanded

1. The court explained that Georgia nuisances are classified as 'abatable' (minor, cheaply fixable problems) or 'permanent' (expected to continue indefinitely), and this classification affects how the four-year statute of limitation under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-30 (a) applies.
2. For permanent nuisances where the harm is immediately obvious when the structure or activity is created, like building a bridge or opening a polluting sewer, the deadline to sue for all past and future damages starts running at that moment of completion.
3. But for permanent nuisances that are 'by their nature continuing' and cause harms only revealed later, such as erosion triggered by heavy rains over time, the plaintiff may instead treat the nuisance as temporary and sue separately for each new harm as it occurs, or sue once for both past and future damages once harm becomes clear.
4. Applying this framework, the court found Wise alleged three distinct harms: increased stormwater flow starting in 2000 (not visible to Wise), a sinkhole discovered in June 2016, and pipe erosion discovered in September 2016, so the case fit the continuing-nuisance category rather than the immediately-observable category.
5. Because the case was decided on a motion to dismiss, the Court of Appeals of Georgia was required to accept Wise's allegations that the harm was hidden from view until 2016 as true and resolve doubts in Wise's favor, rather than assuming the 2000 completion date alone triggered the deadline.
6. Since the Court of Appeals instead treated the increased runoff as the only harm and assumed it was obvious in 2000, it applied the wrong reasoning and wrongly concluded the claim was time-barred as a matter of law.

• inverse condemnation
• permanent nuisance
• statute of limitations
• sinkhole
• stormwater drainage