That's exactly what happened to Melisa and Mike Robinson. 

In 2009, public workers in Okay, Oklahoma, devastated a small mobile-home park Melisa and Mike own and operate. The local sewer authority, which had a sewer easement on the property next door, sent workers out to build a new sewer line. Instead of working on the property they owned, though, they dug up sewer lines on Melisa and Mike's land without any legal authorization. The damage was massive—beyond the damage from the digging itself, misaligned sewer lines failed to drain, and clipped power lines sparked power outages. Inside the tenants' homes, toilets couldn't flush, showers wouldn't drain, and appliances blew out. It was a disgusting mess. When Okay officials refused to fix their mistake, Melisa and Mike ended up fixing the pipes themselves. 

Then they sued. Exercising the same rights enjoyed by property owners nationwide, they filed a lawsuit claiming that the unauthorized construction on their property was a "taking." The logic is simple: If Okay had followed the rules, it would have been required to use eminent domain to take the Robinsons' property before building a sewer line, and eminent domain requires the government to pay just compensation. Since the government didn't pay compensation before it wrecked the property, it should be required to pay now. In other words, the rule in the Constitution is the same as the rule in Pottery Barn: You break it, you buy it. 

And they won. In a case that went all the way up to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, Melisa and Mike were awarded tens of thousands of dollars in compensation for the taking of their property. So far, the system was working the way it was supposed to. The government took Melisa and Mike's property, but a court ordered the government to pay them for what it took.