WEEKLY ROUNDUP FOR THE WEEK OF September 29
Division I:
Contracts – A breach of contract claim will be dismissed if the plaintiffs were not intended beneficiaries of the contract. Here, the county and the golf club entered a 20-year contract where the county agreed to reimburse the golf club for maintaining and operating a stormwater drainage system. The contract did not mention any obligations to adjacent landowners. Therefore, the plaintiffs, who were adjacent landowners whose basement flooded, were not third-party beneficiaries, and the trial court properly dismissed their breach of contract claim. Gueits v Whidbey Golf and Country Club, No. 87251-6-I (Sep. 29, 2025, unpublished).
Negligence – Under the “common enemy doctrine” landowners are shielded from liability for disposing of surface water from their land unless they 1) block a natural water course, 2) artificially channel water onto neighboring properties in a manner greater than or different from the natural flow, or 3) fail to act with due care to avoid unnecessary damage to neighboring properties. Here, the trial court properly dismissed the plaintiff’s negligence claim because the plaintiff’s evidence failed to create an inference that an exception to the common enemy doctrine applied, or that the plaintiff’s basement would not have flooded just as much but-for the defendant’s drainage system. Gueits v Whidbey Golf and Country Club, No. 87251-6-I (Sep. 29, 2025, unpublished).