My broken water line under neighbor's driveway, who is responsible?

[stephmb83]

The original owners of the house I live in now had divided the property into multiple parcels. Someone bought one of the parcels, built a house on it and put in a 600 foot asphalt driveway. The driveway was put on top of our house's water pipes. When they dug out the area to put the driveway, they exposed our water pipe and accidentally busted it. The contractor didn't replace the pipe, he put a compression joint on it because it was a quick fix. He then put down the asphalt driveway. 5 year later (present day), the new house has been sold to a different owner and our pipe located underneath their driveway has failed and is now leaking. I called a plumber and he said it was likely due to the pressure put on the pipe from the asphalt driveway that caused it to break. The owner of the other house brought it to our attention that their was a leak in the first place and he's worried his driveway is going to collapse. Here are my questions:
1) Are we responsible because it is our pipe?
2) Is he responsible because if the driveway had not been put on our pipe, it wouldn't have broken? Even though it's the original builder who broke the pipe and built on top of it, did the current owner inherit the situation and is now responsible for it?
3)If this is reported to homeowner's insurance, would it go to his or ours? It's our pipe, but his property that it happened on and his property that caused the issue?

Any info would be greatly appreciated. This is in the state of Virginia if that matters.

 

[justalayman]

it sounds like the water pipe wasn't deep enough to begin with. There is generally no problem with laying a water pipe under a drive. It happens in the cities all the time and generally there are no problems with a properly installed pipe.


It's your pipe and your liability.

Insurance? I doubt there would be any coverage. Insurance generally doesn't cover wear and tear and 5 years down the road, the original repair, even if this is the leak, lasted long enough to consider this simply failure due to age.

 

[stephmb83]

the pipe is atleast 2 feet deep.

 

[drewguy]

Is there a recorded easement for the pipe? If not, then you may have to prove you have an easement at all. That may be possible given the prior subdivision and so forth, but could present problems.

I see two issues--one is the responsibility for fixing the pipe and the other is the responsibility for fixing the driveway afterwards. The possibly shoddy fix of the pipe several years ago is on you--the current owners aren't responsible for the prior owner's contractor--you should have addressed the issue then. So now you have to fix your water pipe, which likely requires digging up the driveway and then restoring it. If you have an easement you may be able to argue that the neighbors bear the burden of fixing the driveway afterwards since their use conflicts with access to your utility. But that's about as far as you can go.

 

[justalayman]

the pipe should be able to be repaired without damaging the asphalt. If for some reason nobody can figure out how to do that, a directional boring machine can be used to drill beneath the drive causing no damage at all to the drive.

A cheaper method of boring beneath the drive is also possible. Most any plumber or electrician can show you how to "water drill" a pipe under the drive.