Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 222.0

524US1

Unit: $U81

[09-06-00 20:27:26] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 524 U. S. 156 (1998)

177

Souter, J., dissenting

the unchallenged federal and state regulations, raises serious
questions about entitlement to any compensation (which, if
required, would convert any “taking” into a wash transac-
tion from the client’s standpoint).
“Just compensation” gen-
erally means “the full monetary equivalent of the property
taken.” United States v. Reynolds, 397 U. S. 14, 16 (1970).
In determining the amount of just compensation for a tak-
ing, a court seeks to place a claimant “ ‘in as good a position
pecuniarily as if his property had not been taken.’ ” United
States v. 564.54 Acres of Monroe and Pike County Land,
441 U. S. 506, 510 (1979) (quoting Olson v. United States,
292 U. S. 246, 255 (1934)), calculating any loss objectively
and independently of the claimant’s subjective valuation, see,
e. g., Kimball Laundry Co. v. United States, 338 U. S. 1, 5
(1949).

Thus, in deciding what award would be needed to place
the client respondent in as good a position as he would have
enjoyed without a taking, a court presumably would look to
the claimant’s putative property interest as it was or would
have been enjoyed in the absence of IOLTA, cf. Boston
Chamber of Commerce v. Boston, 217 U. S. 189, 195 (1910),
and consequently would measure any required compensation
by the claimant’s loss, not by the government’s (or the pub-
lic’s) gain, ibid. This rule would not obviously produce
much beneﬁt to respondents. While it has been suggested
in their favor that a cognizable taking may occur even when
value has been enhanced, on the supposed authority of Lo-
retto, supra, at 437, n. 15, that case dealt only with physical
occupation, it rested on no ﬁnding that value had actually
been enhanced, and it held nothing about the legal conse-
quences of an actual ﬁnding that enhancement had occurred.
The Court today makes a further suggestion of a way in
which respondents might deﬂect the objection that they have
lost nothing, when it observes that the notion of property is
not limited by the concept of value, ante, at 170. But the
Court makes the point by equating the government’s seizure