Source: http://blogs.harvard.edu/jsinger/category/takings/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 21:15:06+00:00

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When a taking of property by eminent domain to build a highway bifurcated a parcel, one part became landlocked but obtained access to a public road by permission over neighboring property. When that permission ended many years later and the parcel became landlocked the owner sought an easement by necessity over the neighbor’s land but the court found the traditional requirements for such an easement to be lacking. Since the parcel had not become landlocked when severed from the neighboring land there was no basis for imposing an obligation on that neighbor to create an easement for access to the roads. Nor did the owner obtain a prescriptive easement because access to the land had been by permission. No claim was made for a constructive trust or easement by estoppel, alternative theories that might have been relevant if the owner of the servient estate had induced the owner of the landlocked parcel to invest in reliance on the easement. The implication of the case may be that the owner should have received a greater amount of just compensation at the time of the exercise of the eminent domain power given the landlocked nature of the property. Clifton v. Wilkinson, 748 S.E.2d 372 (Va. 2013).
Kentucky had a law declaring unused traveler’s checks to be abandoned property if they are not used after a period of fifteen years; such property escheated to the state. When the legislature reduced the period from fifteen to seven, the change was challenged as a violation of due process of law. The Sixth Circuit held that the legislation was consistent with the due process clause on the ground that substantive due process requires only that the legislation be rationally related to a legitimate government interest. In this case, the legislation shortening the period from fifteen years to seven was a legitimate revenue-raising measure. American Express Travel Related Services Co. v. Kentucky, 641 F.3d 685 (6th Cir. 2013). The court refused, however, to rule on the question of whether the law effected an unconstitutional taking of property without just compensation, unconstitutionally impaired American Express’s contractual obligations, or was unconstitutionally retroactive in application.
In Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n v. United States, 133 S.Ct. 511 (2012), the Supreme Court unanimously overruled the Federal Circuit decision in Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n v. United States, 637 F.3d 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2011), that had held that deviations by the Army Corps of Engineers from a flood management plan that resulted in temporary flooding of riverfront property did not constitute a taking of property without just compensation but might constitute a tort for which compensation could be sought. The Court held that the mere fact that the flooding was temporary did not immunize the government from a takings claim. Justice Ginsburg’s opinion reaffirmed the Court’s preference for “situation-specific factual inquires” in this area, emphasizing that, with only two narrow exceptions, “no magic formula enables a court to judge, in every case, whether a given government interference with property is a taking.” 133 S.Ct. at 518. Because permanent, government-induced flooding is very likely to constitute a taking, Pumpelly v. Green Bay Co., 80 U.S. 166 (1871), it is also possible that intermittent flooding may constitute a taking if it “interferes with private property,” taking into account whether the flooding was the intended or foreseeable result of government action, the owner’s reasonable, investment-backed expectations, the content of state property law, and the character of the land at issue.
In Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, 133 S.Ct. 2586 (2013), the Supreme Court held that the Nollan/Dolan doctrine applied to monetary exactions as well as mandated dedication of property rights. The governmental body in Florida had proposed to allow an owner to dredge his property on the condition that several exactions were met. They included funding offsite mitigation projects on public lands. The Nollan/Dolan rule requires exactions to be substantially related to the reasons for the permit denial; the state cannot condition a land use permit on actions substantially unrelated to the reasons for the land use regulation. Nollan and Dolan both involved governmental proposals to relax regulatory limits on land development in exchange for the owner granting a public easement of access to portions of the owner’s property. In Koontz, the Supreme Court clarified that this rule of law constituted a particular application of the unconstitutional conditions doctrine and that the doctrine equally applied if the permit condition required monetary payments rather than forced dedication of an easement or land. Because the state law required those building on wetlands to offset the resulting environmental damage, the Koontz ruling requires the mitigation demands to be related to the reasons for the wetlands regulation (the “nexus” requirement) and that they be “roughly proportional” to the harm caused by the proposed development. The Court noted that some states have applied this test in the case of monetary exactions and that developing a workable test was not likely to be difficult.
The Court was divided, however, with four Justices dissenting in an opinion written by Justice Kagan.
The Texas Supreme Court held that a transfer of land to a city with an option to repurchase if the property were ever used for non-park purposes constituted a fee simple subject to condition subsequent and that the right of entry was a property right for purposes of the takings clause and compensable when then city failed to honor the condition. El Dorado Land Co., L.P. v. City of McKinney, 395 S.W.3d 798 (Tex. 2013). The deed provided that the conveyance was “subject to the requirement and restriction that the property shall be used only as a Community Park” and gave the grantor the right to repurchase the property at the price the city paid for it or the current fair market value whichever was less if the property were not used for the designated purpose. Although the repurchase right was called an option to purchase, the Texas Supreme Court interpreted it as a right of entry. When the city built a library on the property, the grantor sought to exercise the option; when the city did not respond to its demand, the grantor sued claiming the city had taken its right of entry without just compensation, and the high court agreed with its claim. The court remanded to determine whether construction of the library violated the conditions in the grant.
Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n v. United States, 637 F.3d 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2011), held that deviations by the Army Corps of Engineers from a flood management plan that resulted in temporary flooding of riverfront property did not constitute a taking of property without just compensation but might constitute a tort for which compensation could be sought. The flood management plan exists because the riverfront property is subject to flooding in the first place and it is intended to alleviate that. The doctrinal issue likely to be the focus of the Supreme Court’s ruling is whether temporary flooding constitutes a taking of property.
Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, 77 So. 3d 1220 (Fla. 2011), held that the state of Florida did not take the landowner’s property when it proposed to allow the owner to dredge the property on condition that several exactions were met. The owner refused the exactions and the permit was ultimately denied. The core question is whether the Nollan/Dolan rule requiring exactions to be substantially related to the reasons for the permit denial apply to exactions that do not involve a dedication of the owner’s property to the public. Nollan and Dolan both involved governmental proposals to relax regulatory limits on land development in exchange for the owner granting a public easement of access to portions of the owner’s property. The Supreme Court in Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 544 U.S. 528, 547-548 (2005), explained that this constituted a particular application of the unconstitutional conditions doctrine. The Supreme Court may finally resolve the question of whether Nollan/Dolan doctrine applies, for example, to municipal rules that relax zoning limits if developers contribute money to a fund to promote low-income housing. Or the court may find the case moot and the doctrine inapplicable given the ultimate denial of the permit in this case.
The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the usual rule that an owner may have a “vested right” to engage in activity on land if the owner invests substantially in reliance on existing law even if the use has not commenced before the zoning law is changed to prohibit the previously lawful use. In this case, Glacial Aggregates LLC v. Town of Yorkshire, 924 N.E. 2d 127 (N.Y. 2010), the owner had invested $500,000 in mitigation measures to secure a mining permit and had received the permit; when the town amended its zoning law to classify mining as a use needing a special permit and then refused to issue the permit, the Court of Appeals had little trouble in finding the $500,000 investment, when coupled with the permit grant, to be sufficient to give the owner a vested right to engage in the mining activity. The case is interesting because no mining had yet occurred and all expenditures were undertaken to get the permit itself; in the usual case, a vested right is not found until the owner begins investing in creating the use–for example by beginning to build a structure. Here the initial expenditures were both necessary and expected and of such a magnitude that the new prohibitory law could not be imposed retroactively.
A court in Massachusetts has held that no compensation is due when a city takes a private sewer system. North Adams Apartments, L.P. v. City of North Adams, 2011 Mass. App. LEXIS 41 (App. Ct. 2011). The court held that the transfer of title from the private owner to the city caused the owner no pecuniary loss; indeed, it benefited the owner by transferring maintenance obligations from the owner to the city. The court also noted that developers frequently created sewer hook-ups and then voluntarily (and without compensation) sought to transfer title to the municipality. Although one might think that loss of control of the sewer connections would constitute a property loss, the court’s factual finding was that there was no reduction in fair market value of the property and no economic value to the land owner in retaining ownership of the sewer connections.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled, in In re Opening Private Road ex rel. O’Reilly, 5 A.3d 246 (Pa. 2010), that a statute authorizing an owner to construct a road across neighboring property to get to a public road effected an unconstitutional taking of property. Read minority opinion. The court distinguished the common law doctrine of easement by necessity that grants owners rights of way by necessity over remaining land of a common grantor, finding that doctrine to be constitutional. The court further ruled that such a taking was for a private purpose unless the predominant beneficiary of the taking would be the public.
The Ninth Circuit ruled in Guggenheim v. Goleta that a rent control law covering mobile homes violated the takings clause because it transferred 90% of the market value of the tenancy from the landlord to the tenants. The court distinguish Yee v. City of Escondido, 503 U.S. 519 (1992) on the ground that Yee held that such a law did not effectuate a “physical taking” but left open the question of whether the law constituted a regulatory taking under the Penn Central ad hoc test.

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