Staff Report
The City of Columbia, South Carolina, has been ordered to pay more than $5 million to the former owner of a longtime car wash after he won a legal battle over flood damage.
In the suit, the owner of the car wash formerly located in the Five Points neighborhood, O. Stanley Smith, claimed the city put the nearly 75-year-old operation out of business.
Judge Robert Hood heard the case in late June, and last week issued a ruling in favor of the owner of Constan Car Wash and ordered the city pay him nearly $5.5 million because it had ordered the business to remove a barrier that led to flooding at its Gervais Street location.
According to multiple reports, Hood ruled that Smith legally erected the retaining wall on his own property, and that the city’s actions led directly to the closure of the business that had operated on the site since 1949.
“The City’s actions on March 9, 2021, were not a ‘mere failure to act,’ but were rather calculated to destroy Plaintiffs’ wall, and in fact were intended to cause flooding on the property,” the ruling said.
“The City was well aware that flooding on this property would result from its demolition of the wall – the City’s stated purpose in demolishing the wall was to alleviate flooding on Gervais Street.”
Removing the wall amounted to, “a physical taking of the property for a public use,” the judge said.
The judge awarded $4.2 million in damages, and the ruling also held the owners were entitled to interest earned on the amount from March 2021, the date of the “taking” of the owners’ property, at a rate of 8% per annum. The accrued interest over the last four years adds up to $1.34 million, which raised the total owed to Smith to $5.54 million.
The city has 20 days from the date of last Monday’s ruling to pay the full amount.
The car wash closed from repeated damage from flooding in 2022 after 73 years in operation. The site was demolished in 2023.
The lawsuit centered on whether the city had the legal right to take down the retaining wall, which was built by Smith for $40,000 in 2018 along one of property’s boundary lines. The suit said during the three years the wall was up the property did not flood.
In March, city officials scrapped plans to buy the property for a flood-control project in light of the lawsuit.
Constan Car Wash was reportedly home to the first automated car wash in Columbia.
