In United States v. Dickinson, 331 U.S. 745 (1947), the U.S. Supreme Court held "when a taking is caused by a continuous process, it is not complete, for purposes of determining when the claim arose, 'until the situation becomes stabilized.'" In Dickinson, the government took property through a "continuing process of physical events." The landowners filed an inverse condemnation proceeding alleging the flooding was a taking. The Court ruled that under such circumstances, because the government had put the "onus of determining the decisive moment in the process of acquisition by the United States" on the landowner, the landowner was permitted to postpone filing suit "until the situation became stabilized." Id. at 748-49. "The Fifth Amendment expresses a principle of fairness and not a technical rule of procedure enshrining old or new niceties regarding 'causes of action'--when they are born, whether they proliferate, and when they die." Id. at 748. Thus, Dickinson warned against applying an excessively rigid rule when the government takes property through a gradual physical process. Id. at 749. "When the Government chooses not to condemn land but to bring about a taking by a continuing process of physical events, the owner is not required to resort either to piecemeal or to premature litigation to ascertain the just compensation for what is really 'taken.'" Id.