Eagle Spring Lake Management District v. Steven Q. Wruck

CourtCourt of Appeals of Wisconsin
DecidedJuly 2, 2025
Docket2024AP000447
StatusUnpublished

This text of Eagle Spring Lake Management District v. Steven Q. Wruck (Eagle Spring Lake Management District v. Steven Q. Wruck) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Wisconsin primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Eagle Spring Lake Management District v. Steven Q. Wruck, (Wis. Ct. App. 2025).

Opinion

COURT OF APPEALS DECISION NOTICE DATED AND FILED This opinion is subject to further editing. If published, the official version will appear in the bound volume of the Official Reports. July 2, 2025 A party may file with the Supreme Court a Samuel A. Christensen petition to review an adverse decision by the Clerk of Court of Appeals Court of Appeals. See WIS. STAT. § 808.10 and RULE 809.62.

Appeal No. 2024AP447 Cir. Ct. No. 2021CV1294

STATE OF WISCONSIN IN COURT OF APPEALS DISTRICT II

EAGLE SPRING LAKE MANAGEMENT DISTRICT,

PLAINTIFF-RESPONDENT,

V.

STEVEN Q. WRUCK,

DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.

APPEAL from an order of the circuit court for Waukesha County: MICHAEL J. APRAHAMIAN, Judge. Affirmed.

Before Neubauer, Grogan, and Lazar, JJ.

Per curiam opinions may not be cited in any court of this state as precedent

or authority, except for the limited purposes specified in WIS. STAT. RULE 809.23(3). No. 2024AP447

¶1 PER CURIAM. Steven Q. Wruck appeals from an order granting a motion for summary judgment filed by Eagle Spring Lake Management District (the “District”) and denying his motion for summary judgment. The circuit court granted summary judgment to the District after concluding that a settlement agreement (the “Agreement”) entered into by Wruck and the District to resolve a prior lawsuit was enforceable and not subject to reformation. In this appeal, Wruck argues that the Agreement is not enforceable due to a lack of definiteness in its terms. In addition, Wruck contends that the court erred in declining to equitably apportion the cost of a study to be performed under the Agreement. For the reasons explained below, we reject Wruck’s arguments and affirm the order.

BACKGROUND

¶2 Wruck owns three parcels of land on or near Eagle Spring Lake in Waukesha County. A portion of Wruck’s lakefront property forms part of what is known as the Kroll Dam. The District owns a parcel that abuts Wruck’s land and forms the other half of the Kroll Dam. Approximately one-quarter mile north of the Kroll Dam along the lakeshore sits the Wambold Dam. Wruck refers to the stretch of lakeshore that includes the two dams as the Wambold Milldam Complex. According to Wruck, “approximately 330 property owners in the District … enjoy the lake and are subject to taxation by the District.”

¶3 In 2015, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) notified Wruck that his parcels were subject to periodic maintenance and repair under WIS. STAT. § 31.18 (2023-24).1 Wruck subsequently filed a lawsuit against

1 All references to the Wisconsin Statutes are to the 2023-24 version.

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the District and the DNR asserting various claims, including a claim seeking a declaratory judgment as to the District’s maintenance obligation with respect to Wruck’s half of the Kroll Dam. The parties participated in a mediation in November 2019 that resulted in the Agreement at issue in this case. In addition to Wruck, Peter Jensen, the District’s President, attended the mediation.

¶4 The Agreement contains the following seven substantive paragraphs:

1. Hold litigation in abeyance only as to Declaratory judgment/injunctive relief in claim 1; dismissal of claims 2-10 and withdrawal of sanctions, both w[ith] prejudice.

2. [Wruck] to have a dam failure analysis performed after receiving previous dam failure analysis from the Eagle lake management district.

3. After review of the Dam Analysis by District and its engineers and DNR parties agree to assess liability of exposure attributable to the Wruck portion of the dam.

4. If appropriate parties would agree to negotiate in good faith relative to a purchase or maintenance agreement of the Wruck land encumbered by the dam.

5. DNR to stake the length of the dam on the Wruck property within a reasonable period of time from today’s date to allow for the dam failure analysis to be performed.

6. Reconvene mediation with [the mediator] as soon as the above is accomplished.

7. Wruck agrees to work in good faith with his lender to transfer the “mill race lands” as identified in the complaint to the District. The cost of preparation and recording shall be the sole responsibility of FNTIC. In exchange, the parties agree to review the title/deed for Wruck and update the same to the extent necessary.

The following language appears at the end of the Agreement: “That this [A]greement is final and binding upon any and all parties to this matter, as well as

3 No. 2024AP447

their heirs, successors, and assigns, and is enforceable in any court of law of general jurisdiction per [WIS. STAT. §] 904.085[.]”

¶5 Following mediation, the District provided Wruck with the previous dam failure analysis the DNR had approved in 2002. According to an August 5, 2020 letter from the DNR to Wruck and the District, the parties asked the DNR in March 2020 to “re-evaluate the Dam Failure Analysis (DFA) on file because it assumed a failure of the Wambold Dam …. The question at hand was whether the DFA needed to be revised to also assume a failure of the [Kroll Dam].” In the August 2020 letter, the DNR informed Wruck and the District that certain data upon which the 2002 dam failure analysis was based had become outdated in light of data on “100-year discharges and flood elevations” for Eagle Spring Lake from a 2014 flood insurance study. “These results,” the DNR wrote,

indicate that flows and flood elevations in the effective [flood insurance study] are considerably higher than the results in the DFA, and have invalidated the DFA results currently on file. As a result, the DFA will need to be re-studied and the spillway capacity of the Wambold Dam will need to be re-evaluated.

The DNR instructed the parties to resubmit a dam failure analysis which would, among other things, “need to identify the most probable mode of failure, assessing both [the Wambold Dam and the Kroll Dam].”

¶6 Wruck did not obtain a new failure analysis, and the parties were unable to move forward with other aspects of the Agreement. In September 2021, the District commenced this action against Wruck, asserting quiet title and breach of contract claims premised on Wruck’s alleged failure to transfer the “mill race lands” to the District as required under paragraph 7 of the Agreement. In its complaint, the District alleged that Wruck had not completed the transfer because

4 No. 2024AP447

he “hoped that the District would decide to purchase [his lakefront property] to resolve all claims between the parties.”

¶7 In April 2022, Wruck’s engineer wrote to the District seeking its “preliminary agreement” to purchase the portion of Wruck’s property that was ultimately determined to be part of the Kroll Dam. The District declined this request in a May 9, 2022 letter, noting that Wruck had “failed to complete items previously agreed to in [the A]greement” which had caused the District to sue him “to force compliance with the [A]greement.”

¶8 Shortly thereafter, Wruck filed an answer to the District’s complaint. The answer included, as an affirmative defense, allegations that the Agreement failed because the parties mistakenly believed that the 2002 dam failure analysis remained valid and “because of the District’s indefinite and illusory promises that it would act in good faith toward purchasing Mr. Wruck’s dam parcel” or assume responsibility for maintaining it. Wruck also asserted a counterclaim, “in the alternative to the court ruling [that] the … [A]greement is unenforceable as written,” seeking equitable reformation of the Agreement based upon the parties’ alleged mutual mistake concerning the continuing validity of the 2002 dam failure analysis. Wruck asked the court to “equitably apportion the dam failure analysis expense among the property owners affected.”

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Eagle Spring Lake Management District v. Steven Q. Wruck, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/eagle-spring-lake-management-district-v-steven-q-wruck-wisctapp-2025.