A homeowner’s lawsuit against the city of Atascadero over damage caused by a 2023 storm that forced his family from their home is finally heading to trial more than two years later.
In 2023, San Luis Obispo County experienced historic rainfall, causing an estimated $40 million in damage to the county’s infrastructure.
Aaron Spiller was one of the victims.
Spiller’s home at 1210 San Ramon Road in Atascadero was red-tagged and deemed unsafe for habitation in March 2023 after heavy rains flooded Graves Creek, which borders the property and eroded the creek banks so much that it threatened his home’s foundation.
In September of that year, Spiller filed a lawsuit accusing the city of being responsible for property damage for failing to properly maintain the creek during extremely heavy rains.
Spiller and his family have not been able to return to their home since. They foreclosed on the property this fall, according to court documents.
Spiller bought the home in 2010 for $390,000 and refinanced it in 2020 with a $416,000 mortgage.
The lawsuit originally sought $900,000 in damages to rehabilitate the property, but since Spiller no longer owns the home, he is now suing for damages for the cost of losing the property and emotional distress.
The trial begins Wednesday in the San Luis Obispo Superior Court, Paso Robles Division.
Attorneys for both Spiller and the city declined to comment during the ongoing trial.
“The city looks forward to presenting its case to the judge and jury,” Atascadero spokesperson Terrie Banish told the Tribune in an emailed statement.
Aaron Spiller lost most of his Atascadero backyard after storm debris redirected the flow of Graves Creek into his yard during a March 2023 storm, and the city of Atascadero labeled his house uninhabitable. Photo taken on October 18, 2023.
What happened to the Atascadero home?
Court documents show the Spillers’ problems began on Jan. 22, 2023, when Spiller and his neighbors noticed an oak tree had fallen into Graves Creek during a storm and became stuck upstream of the Spillers’ home.
The city issued an emergency proclamation on Jan. 9, warning that “fallen trees” posed a threat to public and private property and specifically cited Graves Creek as one of the “catastrophic and extremely dangerous conditions to the safety of persons, property and public services,” triggering the state of emergency.
That March, in another atmospheric river, oak trees were pushed downstream and landed on a creek bank near the Spillers’ property.
Storm debris trapped in trees created a dam that directed river water directly toward the Spillers’ property, causing water to severely erode his backyard.
The photo at left was taken in the backyard of 1210 San Ramon Road before the storm on March 10, 2023. The picture on the right is the scene after the storm.
According to court documents, Spiller personally contacted the city via email on March 10 seeking help, but was told that “if a creek naturally meanders outside of a creek reservation, the owner of the creek reservation is not responsible for maintaining or restoring it.”
The creek “belongs to the property of the city and Spiller,” court documents say.
Later that day on March 10, the Atascadero Fire Department came to Spiller’s residence to monitor the situation and set up caution tape around the erosion, but took no action to remove the tree from the creek. Spiller was told to contact the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help.
Over the next few days, severe weather allowed Spiller to enter the creek with the help of family and friends and attempt to clear oak trees and storm debris on his own, but the large trees and large amounts of material blocking the creek were too large to clear on his own, court documents said.
Heavy rains hit again on March 14 and 15, causing further erosion of the Spillers’ vanished backyard until “only a few feet of land remained between the Spillers’ house and the top of the embankment,” court documents said.
On March 16, Spiller emailed the city again asking for “urgent” help.
“The currently rerouted riverbank is approximately five feet from the foundation of my home,” he wrote, again calling for the oak trees to be removed and the riverbank, then adjacent to his home, to be strengthened.
The photo at left was taken in the backyard of 1210 San Ramon Road before the storm on March 10, 2023. The picture on the right is the scene after the storm.
The property was red-tagged on March 17, forcing the Spillers to evacuate, and the city contracted a service to remove trees and debris from the creek at a cost of $20,000, court documents show.
Court documents say Spiller shared a driveway with a neighbor who would not allow heavy equipment to cross his driveway for fear of causing damage, so a larger portion of the oak tree was cut down but could not be removed from the creek bed. On March 18 and 19, smaller debris, branches and smaller wood were chipped and removed.
But by that time, “catastrophic damage had occurred and Spiller’s property was beyond salvage,” court documents said.
On June 29, 2023, local contractor Anderson Burton quoted the cost of filling the erosion with native soil to restore the damaged property at $882,800, “more than the entire property is worth,” Spiller said in court Thursday. The property was assessed at $790,000 as of March 2023, according to court documents.
When asked by city attorneys in court if he had considered making any repairs to restore the property, Spiller said “there’s no way I would.”
“It takes a huge amount of money to get this project off the ground – I just don’t have that kind of money in the bank,” he said.
Spiller received a $14,000 individual assistance grant from FEMA in April 2023, but told the Tribune at the time that it was “just a drop in the bucket.”
After the incident, Spiller received mortgage forbearance, temporarily halting mortgage payments. He foreclosed on the home and sold it back to the lender this fall.
“I no longer own it,” Spiller told the court Thursday.
Spiller said he filed a claim against the city in July 2023 and met with multiple city, county and federal representatives, including Councilmember Susan Fink, Supervisor Bruce Gibson and Congressman Jimmy Panetta, but to no avail.
He sued the city on September 13, 2023, after his claims were invalid.
Aaron Spiller lost most of his Atascadero backyard after storm debris diverted Graves Creek into his yard during a March 2023 storm, and the city of Atascadero labeled his house uninhabitable. See October 18, 2023 here.
What do the homeowners and the city government advocate?
The courtroom was empty Thursday except for Spiller, attorneys, the judge, a 12-person jury and two of Spiller’s family members.
Although Spiller’s attorneys argued that the city had a duty to identify and remove the oak tree and the debris trapped in the river, the city countered that it could not remove the tree because no residents informed them of its existence before March 10, 2023.
“The city was not and could not be held liable because it failed to provide notice of the situation and did not cause it,” court documents state.
The city argued that Spiller neither called the city about the oak tree before March 10 — even though his neighbors remembered him saying so — nor “took any action to remove the tree or require any entity or individual to remove it” between storms, according to the city attorney’s trial brief.
“Spiller … took no steps to protect his property from erosion prior to the incident,” court documents state.
Spiller, however, believes the city has a responsibility to protect his property by maintaining the creek.
“Despite the emergency proclamation, the city admitted that it took absolutely no action to inspect Graves Creek for fallen trees, debris or other hazards between January 10, 2023, and March 10, 2023,” Spiller’s attorneys said in a trial brief, referring to the city’s Jan. 9 emergency proclamation. “As a result, days after the emergency proclamation was approved, the city was never aware that a massive oak tree had fallen in the creek upstream of the Spiller property.”
There is also disagreement over who owns the portion of Graves Creek under Spiller’s property.
More than 90 percent of Graves Creek is privately owned, but the city does own two creek parcels adjacent to Spiller’s property, court filings from city attorneys say.
Spiller said he didn’t call a crane company to remove the tree in March 2023 because he didn’t want to pay and didn’t feel he had the “power” to contract with a company for city land.
On the other hand, the city does not perform regular maintenance on the creek because it is “almost entirely privately owned,” court documents say.
The city also argued it may have been the fault of Spiller’s neighbor, who owns the tree.
“I don’t know who owns that tree, but I know it ended up in the creek and that’s what caused the damage,” Spiller said.
Aaron Spiller, who sued the city of Atascadero in 2023, appears in San Luis Obispo Superior Court, Paso Robles Division, on Dec. 4, 2025, claiming storm damage to his property forced him and his family to permanently evacuate their home that was deemed uninhabitable. More than two years later, the trial began on December 3, 2025.