Title: STATE ex rel. DEPT OF TRANSPORTATION v. LITTLE

State: oklahoma

Issuer: Oklahoma Supreme Court

Document:

STATE ex rel. DEPT OF TRANSPORTATION v. LITTLE  STATE ex rel. DEPT OF TRANSPORTATION v. LITTLE 2004 OK 74 100 P.3d 707 Case Number: 96978 Decided: 09/21/2004 THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA STATE OF OKLAHOMA ex rel. Department of Transportation , Plaintiff/Appellant, v. BILLY E. and MARTHA J. LITTLE, Husband and Wife, and the CHEROKEE COUNTY TREASURER, Defendants/Appellees. ON CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS, DIVISION IV ¶0 The Oklahoma Department of Transportation brought this condemnation proceeding in the district court, Cherokee County, Mark L. Dobbins, trial judge, to acquire for highway construction purposes fee simple title to property owned by Billy E. and Martha J. Little. A jury returned a verdict for the Littles in the amount of $265,000.00 and the court entered judgment in that amount. After its postjudgment motions were denied, the Department of Transportation appealed, claiming that the verdict included unauthorized and duplicate elements of compensation. The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded the proceeding to the trial court with instructions to reduce the judgment by a sum to be determined upon remand. On certiorari sought by the Department of Transportation, THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS' OPINION IS VACATED IN PART AND LEFT UNDISTURBED IN PART; THE JUDGMENT OF THE TRIAL COURT IS AFFIRMED IN PART AND REVERSED IN PART; THE CAUSE IS REMANDED TO THE TRIAL COURT FOR FURTHER PROCEEDINGS TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THIS PRONOUNCEMENT. Barry K. Roberts, Norman, Oklahoma, attorney for Appellant. Tim K. Baker, TIM K. BAKER AND ASSOCIATES, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, attorney for Appellees. ¶1 The following questions are pressed for decision on certiorari: (1) Does landowners' receipt of an administratively determined relocation assistance payment preclude them from seeking reimbursement for relocation expenses in the condemnation proceeding? and (2) Does the record establish that the jury compensated landowners for both the fair market value of certain improvements and for the cost of reestablishing the same improvements at their new business location? We answer both questions in the negative, but in the absence of a timely landowners' quest for certiorari relief we leave undisturbed the Court of Civil Appeals' disposition in favor of post-remand reduction in the amount of the judgment. Also left undisturbed is the Court of Civil Appeals' disposition of the landowners' application for an appeal-related counsel fee. I STATEMENT OF THE FACTS ¶2 The Oklahoma Department of Transportation ("ODOT") brought this condemnation proceeding on behalf of the State of Oklahoma to acquire approximately one acre of land2 located in Cherokee County for the purpose of widening State Highway 82 near Keys, Oklahoma. The land was owned by Billy E. and Martha J. Little ("landowners") and was used by them to operate a boat repair business. Although only a portion of the property would ultimately be occupied by the widened highway, ODOT determined that it was necessary to acquire the entire tract. Negotiations to purchase the property failed, and ODOT initiated this condemnation proceeding on 27 October 1998. Court-appointed commissioners assessed just compensation for the land, building, and other improvements at $199,100.00. Both parties took exception to the commissioners' report and demanded a jury trial. ¶3 After certain preliminary issues were brought to a conclusion,3 a jury trial was held on 12 and 13 March 2001. A verdict was returned assessing just compensation at $265,000.00. Judgment in that amount was entered on 27 March 2001. ODOT moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, for remittitur, or for a new trial. All of its motions were denied. ¶4 ODOT appealed, claiming that the judgment contained both unauthorized and duplicate elements of compensation. Landowners moved to dismiss the appeal on the grounds that it had been filed out of time. The Court of Civil Appeals, Division IV ("COCA"), agreed that the appeal had not been timely filed and ordered it dismissed. We granted certiorari, vacated the intermediate appellate court's opinion that dismissed the appeal, and remanded the cause to that court for disposition on the merits. The COCA then affirmed the judgment in part, reversed it in part, and remanded the proceeding to the trial court with instructions to reduce the judgment in an amount to be determined upon remand. ODOT sought and was granted certiorari. Landowners did not file a certiorari petition of their own. We now vacate the COCA's opinion except for that portion which orders a post-remand reduction in the amount of the judgment and that which grants landowners' request for an appeal-related counsel fee. In doing so, we affirm the trial court's judgment in part, reverse it in part, and remand the cause to the trial court for further proceedings to be consistent with this pronouncement. II ODOT'S APPEAL AND THE COCA DISPOSITION ¶5 Prior to the initiation of this condemnation proceeding, landowners received approximately $13,500.00 as reimbursement of relocation expenses pursuant to the federal and state relocation assistance acts.4 Although landowners admitted that they received this payment, the specifics of how they came to receive the payment and the payment's amount were not part of the evidence submitted in the condemnation proceeding.5 We do know that landowners did not appeal the payment's amount through the administrative appeals process. ¶6 In the condemnation proceeding ODOT moved in limine to prevent landowners from introducing into evidence any proof of their moving and related expenses, arguing that the federal and state relocation assistance acts' administrative process was the exclusive means of obtaining reimbursement of such expenses. ODOT argued that landowners' failure to pursue the administrative appeals procedure available to a party who is dissatisfied with the amount of a relocation assistance payment foreclosed their access to a judicial forum to seek reimbursement of any additional relocation expenses. The trial court disagreed and allowed the jury to consider as a compensable item the amount of relocation expenses landowners incurred that had not been reimbursed by the relocation payment landowners received. The jury awarded landowners $265,000.00 in a lump sum. ¶7 ODOT appealed, again arguing that landowners' exclusive remedy for recovery of relocation expenses was through the administrative procedure set up by the federal and state relocation assistance acts and their failure to exhaust administrative remedies with respect to the relocation assistance payment they received barred them from seeking any relief in a judicial forum for moving and related expenses. ODOT argued that the lump sum judgment, which included unrecoverable relocation expenses, "exceeded the trial court's jurisdiction" and must be reversed. Landowners argued on appeal that relocation expenses are compensable in a condemnation proceeding and the trial court's reception of evidence of those expenses was appropriate. ¶8 The COCA opinion held both that relocation expenses can be recovered in a condemnation proceeding and that landowners were required to exhaust administrative remedies under the federal and state relocation acts. COCA interwove these two principles by holding that the amount of relocation expenses recoverable in the condemnation proceeding is limited to the difference between the amount of moving expenses landowners actually incurred and the maximum relocation assistance payment to which they would have been entitled had they pursued their administrative remedies to a successful conclusion. Hence the COCA remanded the case to the trial court with directions to determine the maximum amount landowners could have received if they had succeeded in an administrative appeal. COCA then instructs the trial court to reduce the judgment by any additional amount landowners could have received but did not due to their inaction. According to COCA's reduction formula, landowners' recovery must be reduced by either $6,500.00 or by $2,594.00, depending on which section of the federal relocation assistance act the trial court decides is applicable to them. ¶9 ODOT, who agrees with the exhaustion-of-administrative-remedies theory adopted by the COCA opinion, seeks certiorari not to challenge the COCA's reasoning, but to obtain corrective relief - reversal of the judgment - denied by the COCA. ODOT contends that the COCA should have reversed the judgment in its entirety for landowners' failure to exhaust administrative remedies rather than remanding the cause to the trial court for a hearing to determine a reduction in the amount of the judgment. Landowners, who stand to lose at most $6,500.00 of their $265,000.00 judgment, did not file their own certiorari petition. III STANDARD OF REVIEW ¶10 ODOT raises two issues on certiorari. First, although ODOT agrees with the COCA's holding that landowners had to exhaust administrative remedies under the federal and state relocation assistance acts, it challenges the COCA's remand-and-reduction disposition as inconsistent with that holding because it permits landowners to recover some of their relocation expenses in the condemnation proceeding. ODOT contends that landowners are not entitled to recover any of their relocation expenses outside of the federal and state administrative relocation assistance scheme. Although neither ODOT nor landowners challenge the COCA's exhaustion holding, we nevertheless must consider its correctness in order to determine whether ODOT is entitled to the relief it seeks. We are hence called upon to analyze the interplay of the federal and state relocation assistance acts with state eminent domain law. Statutory interpretation raises a legal question which is subject to a de novo standard of review.6 An appellate court is endowed with plenary, independent and nondeferential authority to re-examine a trial court's legal rulings.7 ¶11 The second issue raised by ODOT is whether the trial court erred when it permitted landowners' experts to testify as to the cost of installing certain improvements at landowners' new business location. ODOT contends that this evidentiary ruling was in error because the experts had already included the value of those very same improvements in their assessment of the fair market value of the condemned property. This error, ODOT claims, misled the jury into awarding landowners double compensation. The range of inquiry into the value of property taken or damaged in eminent domain proceedings is left largely to the discretion of the trial court, and unless that discretion is abused the trial court's ruling admitting or excluding such evidence will not be disturbed.8 IV UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THIS CASE, LANDOWNERS WERE ENTITLED TO RECOVER UNREIMBURSED MOVING AND RELATED EXPENSES IN THE CONDEMNATION PROCEEDING ¶12 The Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Act of 1970 (the "FURA")9 was enacted by the United States Congress to standardize benefits available to persons and businesses physically displaced and economically harmed due to the acquisition of real property for use in federal and federally assisted projects.10 Its major purpose is to assure that one who is displaced by a federally assisted program does not suffer a loss if that loss can be reasonably compensated by a money payment.11 It not only guarantees a displaced person the fair market value of his or her property, but also authorizes additional payments and services designed to reduce or eliminate the unfair burden displacement visits on citizens who must relocate for the public good.12 State agencies must comply with the FURA's payment and assistance provisions as a condition for receiving federal funding of programs and projects that cause displacement.13 ¶15 The payment provisions authorized by the FURA and the ORAA (hereinafter referred to together for convenience as the relocation assistance acts) are implicated in this case because the highway-widening project for which landowners' property was condemned was financed in part by federal money. ¶16 Where an aggrieved party brings a lawsuit when adequate administrative relief is available, the action is to be viewed as fraught with a fatal remedial impediment that bars judicial relief. ¶17 This proceeding raises the first-impression question of how the relocation assistance acts and state condemnation proceedings interrelate. In Tate v. Browning-Ferris, Inc., ¶19 Long before the enactment of the FURA, moving and related expenses were recoverable in this jurisdiction in a condemnation proceeding as an element of just compensation. In Blincoe v. Choctaw, Oklahoma & Western R.R., "That the owner 'by reason of such railroad' has been put to the expense of removing the stock of lumber then on hand is not disputed; neither can it be denied that the cost of such removal was made necessary by the condemnation of the real estate, and is an injury and damage to the owner to the extent of the cost of such removal. In other words, this ruling [i.e. the trial court's ruling excluding evidence of the cost of moving the lumber] would permit the railroad to take the owner's land and thereby compel him to bear whatever expense may be consequent upon preserving his personal property, and yet be remediless therefor. If this shall he (sic) held to be the law, then the constitutional provision, 'nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation,' becomes almost as much a sword as a shield to the private citizen, for the compulsory addition to the cost of the personal property of the citizen is as much a taking as the absorption of the real estate itself. Nor is this conclusion relieved or its result modified to the citizen by the fact that the agency thus arbitrarily adding to the cost of his property cannot carry on the business in which he is engaged. The result to the citizen in this case is the same whether the railroad company are benefited by the expenditure or not. In either event the cost of removing the lumber is dead loss to him, occasioned by this taking of his real estate under this power of eminent domain." ¶20 The first state Supreme Court pronouncement on the compensability of moving expenses was made in Oil Fields & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. Treese Cotton Co, ¶21 Recently, in City of Oklahoma City v. Hamilton, ¶22 Article II, § 24 of the Oklahoma Constitution states: "Private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use without just compensation. Just compensation shall mean the value of the property taken, and in addition, any injury to any part of the property not taken. . . ." This provision is not by its terms limited to real property nor does it exclude from compensable injury damage to personal property when an entire tract of land is taken. "The term 'property' as used in our Constitution regarding the taking of private property for public use for which just compensation must be paid includes not only real estate held in fee, but also easements, personal property and every valuable interest which can be enjoyed and recognized as property." "In this jurisdiction by force of constitutional provision (Art. 2, Sec. 23) the owner of private property taken 'or damaged' for private use is entitled . . . to consequential damages resulting from an indirect taking." ¶23 The relocation assistance acts do not add to or subtract from the components of value or damage due a condemnee as just compensation under the state law of eminent domain. ¶24 While a condemnee in Oklahoma is at liberty to seek reimbursement of moving and related expenses in a condemnation proceeding or through the ORAA, the question raised in this case is whether receipt of an administrative payment pursuant to the relocation assistance acts precludes a subsequent judicial determination of the same expenses in a condemnation proceeding held under state eminent domain law. As a general rule, the doctrine of preclusion operates to enjoin successive attempts to relitigate the same issue in different forums. V THE RECORD DOES NOT SHOW THAT THE JURY AWARDED DUPLICATE COMPENSATION ¶27 ODOT argues that the judgment on jury verdict must be viewed as having compensated landowners twice for certain items because landowners were permitted to introduce evidence of both the fair market value of certain improvements on the condemned tract as well as evidence of the cost of making the very same improvements at their new business location. Landowners deny that the judgment includes duplicate compensation. ¶28 We have reviewed the transcript of the proceedings and cannot find record support for ODOT's contention. The only specific item identified by ODOT as having been included twice by landowners' witnesses is payment for a septic system. Landowners' first appraiser listed "septic tanks and lateral fields" as one of the improvements taken and gave them a value of $2,200.00. He then testified that the landowners were entitled to $20,195.65 for land preparation at the new location of their business. Included in the latter amount was an unspecified sum attributable to septic system construction and/or installation activities: a perk test, excavation for septic tanks, and lumber for culverts. On cross examination, this expert testified that he thought the landowners deserved to be paid both for the septic system taken and for the new one they had to install, but his testimony as to the value of the taken septic system and the cost of land preparation connected to the construction of a new septic system did not clearly reveal that he actually priced the same items twice. Rather, the witness seemed to be saying that the costs included in the land prep figure related to the septic system were not included in the $2,200.00 figure assigned to the septic tanks and lateral fields. We cannot discern from the record whether the $2,200.00 the witness assigned as the value of the condemned septic system included excavation and installation and the testimony in regard to the septic system at the new location appeared to be limited to excavation and installation-related activities. ¶29 Landowners' second appraiser priced the replacement cost of a septic system and also included as compensation various items of land preparation, but duplication of compensation for the septic system is no more discernable from her testimony than it is from that of the first appraiser. ¶30 ODOT also complains that landowners' experts testified about the cost of installing and connecting utilities at the new business location, suggesting that those costs were also included in the fair market value of the condemned land and building. We disagree. The witnesses testified as to the fair market value of unimproved land at the condemnation site and nothing in the record indicates that the cost of reconstructing a similar building included the cost of installing and connecting utilities. ¶31 It is not entirely clear whether ODOT is also claiming that the jury's verdict contained duplicate damages because the landowners were permitted to introduce evidence of elements of damage covered by the relocation assistance acts, but the record does not support that contention either. Both of the landowners' experts testified that they deducted the amount the landowners received as a relocation assistance payment from the amount of compensation the experts determined the landowners were owed. ¶32 In short, ODOT has failed to point to record proof of duplicated compensation. The admissibility of the value of property taken in condemnation is within the trial court's discretion. Unless that discretion is abused, the trial court's ruling will not be disturbed. No abuse of discretion is discernible from the record in this case. VI APPEAL-RELATED COUNSEL FEE ¶33 ODOT's petition for certiorari did not seek review of COCA's award of an appeal-related counsel fee. Hence we need not address the counsel-fee issue and that portion of the COCA's opinion which addresses that issue is left undisturbed. VII SUMMARY ¶34 Landowners sought reimbursement of their moving and related expenses as an element of just compensation in a condemnation proceeding. ODOT sought to exclude evidence of such expenses at trial, but was unsuccessful. The judgment on jury verdict must be viewed as including reimbursement of relocation expenses. ODOT's quest to have the judgment reversed for error in the award of relocation expenses is denied. Oklahoma jurisprudence sanctions such recovery under the circumstances of this case. Yet, because landowners did not seek certiorari relief, that portion of the COCA's opinion remanding the cause to the trial court with directions to reduce the judgment's amount is the settled law of the case and will not be disturbed. We also leave undisturbed the COCA's award of an appeal-related counsel fee. ¶35 THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS' OPINION IS VACATED IN PART AND LEFT UNDISTURBED IN PART; THE JUDGMENT OF THE TRIAL COURT IS AFFIRMED IN PART AND REVERSED IN PART; THE CAUSE IS REMANDED TO THE TRIAL COURT FOR FURTHER PROCEEDINGS TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THIS PRONOUNCEMENT. ¶36 ALL JUSTICES CONCUR FOOT