trailer court.
The landlords also tout that they were never in any violation
of health codes as administered by the Health Department. However,
we have reviewed the reports and testings made by the Health
Department and have discovered the following warning in the reports
when the results proved to be qlnoncontaminated.gq
The laboratory examination of this sample showed no
evidence of contamination. This indicates that, as far
as can be determined by a laboratory examination, the
water was safe for drinking at the time the sample was
taken. However, these results cannot be relied upon as
indicating the safety of the water at all times unless
the source is properly located and maintained.
Any well construction which does not positively exclude
all surface and subsurface contamination must be
considered as dangerous to health. All dust, pump
spillage, surface drainage, bird droppings, scrapings
from one's shoes, etc. must be prevented from entering
the well.
The surface and subsurface contamination of concern and
reported by the tenants is exactly the type of contamination named
in the warning. Further, the Health Department's employee Kikkert
explained more clearly the meaning of water test results in his
deposition as follows:
Q. And how about the other one [sample]?
A. And the next one, a sample taken by ...
Brandvold
shows contamination with no coliform bacteria.
Q. What would that mean?
A. That the particular multiple tube fermentation media
was able to grow something, but not coliform bacteria.
The laboratory problem there is that whatever's growing
may have crowded out what we wanted to test for and the
coliform bacteria and not allowed it to grow, so it's
marked as no coliform bacteria, but the simple matter may
be that another contaminate has crowded it out and not
allowed it to show up on our test.
Due to the historical non-attentiveness of Brandvold, the
tenants chose not to believe news circulated by word of mouth that
the water was once again safe for consumption, particularly when
the septic problems had not been alleviated. The tenants logically
connected the contaminated water with the sewage leakage and based
their actions regarding whether to drink the water again on their
own observations.
With this testimony in mind we examine existing case law.
First, in Corrigan v. Janney (1981), 192 Mont. 99, 102, 626 P.2d
838, 839, we indicated that by adopting the Residential Landlord