However, "this [was] an ordinary case of incidental damage which if inflicted by a private individual might be a tort but which could be nothing else. In such cases there is no remedy against the United States."

—holding that incidental damage to a plaintiff's pier resulting from non-negligent government blasting was not a taking

Justice Holmes, writing for the Supreme Court, stated that there might have been a taking if the government had deliberately inflicted the damage to property.

There, the government blasted the bed of a stream on the side of a privately-owned pier, causing portions of the pier to break off and fall into the water.

The court found the damages were incidental, and thus, noncompensable, stating that it did "not understand that a single isolated and unintentional act of the United States resulting in damage or destruction of personal property amounts to a taking in a constitutional sense. It is, we think, rather a tortious act for which the government is only consensually liable."

—the Federal government in the exercise of its power over navigation has caused actual injury to private rights which was held to be without redress.

—rejecting a claim that the property was destroyed and a taking had occurred, when the property was only damaged

The concept of "takings' does not normally encompass isolated incidents of harm for which redress in tort is the usual remedy.

That defense works uneasily, to be sure, against ordinary tort actions, but it has never been held to apply to cases where property is taken instead of destroyed by tort action