Opinion ID: 1359884
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The defense of illegality.

Text: The parties disagree whether a court in a condemnation action may ever examine the legality of the intended public use of the property before granting a public condemner's demand for immediate possession. For its claim that a condemnation court has no such authority the city relies on two sections of the General Condemnation Procedure Act, ORS chapter 35, sections 35.265 and 35.275. Section 35.275 deals with applications by a private condemner [5] for an order to occupy and make use of the property to be condemned before the condemnation action is completed. The section requires the court to determine the reasons for requiring speedy occupation, to give consideration to the public interest involved and the protection of the owners' interests, and to impose protective provisions such as a deposit of funds toward just compensation or a surety bond. ORS 35.275(2), (3). The section dealing with immediate possession by a public condemner, ORS 35.265, contains no similar directives to the court. It speaks only of depositing estimated just compensation with the clerk of the court when immediate possession of the property is considered necessary by the public condemner. [6] From this difference, the city argues that the legislature intended the court to grant a public condemner immediate possession upon the deposit of the required fund without further inquiry into the necessity or propriety of the demand. Although the taking must be for a public use, according to the city this means only that the use qualifies as public and is of a kind for which the public condemner has the power of eminent domain. Defendant, to the contrary, contends that a taking of the property for a use which is forbidden by law cannot be a taking for public use within the constitutional bounds of eminent domain, and that a taking beyond those constitutional bounds cannot give rise to a necessity for immediate possession. [7] The problem underlying this dispute about the preconditions for immediate possession is neither new nor peculiar to Oregon law. It was less likely to arise when there were few legal restraints on the uses of property, once the use for which it was condemned was within the eminent domain authority of the condemner at all. The coming of farreaching land use and environmental regulations makes the problem more acute. Those responsible for public projects often cannot wait to assemble property or to begin preliminary work until every legally required permit or other approval for its execution has been secured, perhaps from several different governmental agencies. Indeed, on occasion they may not be able to obtain required approval or financing without first securing necessary property. Some private owners, on the other hand, resist sacrificing their property, perhaps to needless destruction, if the project not only may be abandoned in practice, but if at the time of the taking it cannot legally be carried out. Cases from other jurisdictions serve to illustrate the problem. In Seadade Industries, Inc. v. Florida Power & Light Co., 245 So.2d 209 (Fla. 1971), Seadade resisted condemnation of its property for a canal to discharge heated water into Biscayne Bay on the grounds that this discharge would violate local ordinances, state laws, and federal regulations and did not have the required approval of any of five different agencies. The Supreme Court of Florida recognized that the utility company there seeking condemnation could not demonstrate necessity for taking land which it might not be allowed to use, but that it would be unreasonable to delay a start on the canal until all permits were granted. The court therefore required the condemner to show, first, a reasonable probability that the regulations and permit requirements would be satisfied, and second, that condemnation in advance of obtaining the required approval would not result in irreparable harm to the resources protected by those requirements. 245 So.2d at 214-15. In a Kansas case, Concerned Citizens, U., Inc. v. Kansas Power & L. Co., 215 Kan. 218, 523 P.2d 755 (1974), a proposed condemnation of land for a complex of power plants, which was dependent on obtaining various permits, was claimed to conflict with the existing agricultural zoning of the proposed site. Although the Kansas court suggested that the conflict between the county's delegated power to zone and the utility's delegated power to condemn might require legislative resolution, it held that condemnation did not depend on prior rezoning for the proposed use, which the utility could initiate only as an owner of the property. Applying the formula that the condemner's decision to take could be tested for abuse of discretion, the court held that the decision of KPL must be based upon a reasonable probability that the construction and operation of this energy center will comply with all applicable standards and meet the requirements for the issuance of all necessary permits, state and federal. 523 P.2d at 769. In a third controversy over a power generating plant, Falkner v. Northern States Power Co., 75 Wis.2d 116, 248 N.W.2d 885 (1977), the Wisconsin court similarly stated the test to be whether the condemner had a reasonable probability of meeting all requirements for its project and could reasonably expect to achieve its public purpose. 248 N.W.2d at 893. These cases differ legally insofar as they involved private rather than governmental condemners, were decided under different statutes, and the latter two were suits to enjoin the condemner rather than defenses to the taking. In Mann v. City of Marshalltown, 265 N.W.2d 307 (Iowa 1978), however, the Supreme Court of Iowa followed the Wisconsin court's Falkner opinion in a suit to enjoin a city's condemnation of land for airport expansion that was alleged to violate an existing zoning ordinance. The court held that the city's claim of necessity could be challenged for fraud, oppression, illegality or abuse of power or discretion, if the opponents could show that the city could not reasonably expect to achieve its public purpose. 265 N.W.2d at 315. But as we have said, we cite these cases as illustrations of the problem, not as authority on the law of this state. Some decisions of this court, antedating the enactment of the General Condemnation Procedure Act, also recited the fraud, bad faith, or abuse of discretion formula as a limit on judicial review of a condemner's finding that it was necessary to take specific property for a public use. See Moore Mill & Lumber Co. v. Foster, 216 Or. 204, 236-237, 336 P.2d 39, 337 P.2d 810 (1959), Port of Umatilla v. Richmond, 212 Or. 596, 620-627, 321 P.2d 338 (1958), City of Eugene v. Johnson, 183 Or. 421, 426-429, 192 P.2d 251 (1948). In the act, ORS 35.235 provides statutory presumptions that the property is necessary for a public use and that this use is planned or located in a manner which will be most compatible with the greatest public good and the least private injury. The section specifies pretrial determination of challenges to this presumption only as to private condemners, ORS 35.235(4). We need not here examine whether this makes the presumptive evidence in public takings conclusive or whether the old formula was meant to survive, because the focus of the present proceeding has shifted away from defendant's view of necessity. The parties disagree about a different issue, whether judicial review not only of necessity but also of legality is foreclosed at the stage of a public condemner's motion for immediate possession. Does the act require a court to grant a public condemner immediate possession in advance of condemnation without inquiry, not only whether acquisition of the property is necessary for an authorized use, but even whether the proposed use is unlawful? The city asserts that the act does so; defendant contends that it does not and could not without raising serious constitutional doubts. We note first that the section on which the city relies, ORS 35.265, does not answer the question. It prescribes what procedures should occur within the condemning agency in order to obtain funds for the estimated just compensation to be deposited with the clerk of the court. [8] It does not address what thereafter occurs in the court. This requires further examination. The General Condemnation Procedure Act emerged from a long and complex history which need not be traced in detail here. The background of the earlier statutory and decisional law that furnished the impetus for revision and the original draft of the act are set forth in an article by its drafter in Gearhart, Condemnation Procedures in Oregon, 46 Or.Law Rev. 125 (1967). With respect to the question of immediate possession, the statutes existing in 1965 authorized state and local agencies taking land for various specified purposes to enter the land and begin the proposed project once the condemnation action was commenced. [9] The draft revision introduced in 1965 proposed to place all condemners under the judicial procedures for immediate occupation that ORS 35.275 and its predecessors have provided for private condemners. [10] No bill was enacted at that session. A bill drafted by a committee of the Oregon State Bar and introduced but not enacted in the 1969 session would have distinguished between public and private condemners, authorizing any public condemner after the commencement of proceedings to enter the property and make use thereof for the purposes for which the same is being appropriated. HB 1519, § 9, 55th Or.Leg.Assemb., Reg.Sess. (1969). The 1971 bill that became law initially contained the same provision. HB 1456, § 9, 56th Or.Leg.Assemb., Reg.Sess. (1971). [11] Section 9 was deleted by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but the reasons do not appear from the legislative records. The committee minutes show that Senator Yturri voiced some unspecified opposition to the section. Committee tapes suggest that this occurred in the context of testimony proposing that landowners should receive payment when the condemner takes possession, but this would not explain a decision to do away with the public condemner's powers to secure immediate possession altogether. The next section of the bill, section 10, extended the requirement of depositing estimated just compensation from the State Highway Commission and the State Board of Forestry to public condemners generally. Engrossed HB 1456, § 10 (1971), now ORS 35.265(2). Nevertheless, the effect of deleting section 9 of HB 1456 was to make no provision at all in the General Condemnation Procedure Act governing claims and challenges to immediate possession by public condemners. When the legislature repeals existing provisions for immediate possession and deliberately removes the relevant successor provision from the revised law, for whatever reason of policy or misunderstanding, it would be plausible to conclude that the new act left public condemners with no authority to compel immediate possession. We might well draw that inference if the act in the next section of HB 1456, section 10, had not retained the provision for funding and depositing estimated just compensation when a public condemner considers it necessary to obtain immediate possession of the property, the provision now found in ORS 35.265, supra n. 6. Against this ambiguous legislative background, we assume for purposes of argument defendant's position that he would not be obliged to grant the city immediate possession of property if the eventual use of the property for the sole public use for which the city may acquire it is unlawful. [12] We doubt that upon a deposit of just compensation a court must grant the City of Salem, for instance, an order of immediate possession of the State Capitol for an otherwise legitimate public use without determining whether the building was lawfully available for that purpose, though the city's argument seems to extend to this. We further assume that unlawful differs from not presently necessary in that unlawful refers to a legal obstacle that requires a change in a general law, such as a statute, a regulation, or a local ordinance, charter, or general plan, rather than only a permit, approval, or other discretionary action or factual judgment concerning the specific project. It is one thing for a court to estimate the procedural and evidentiary obstacles and the eventual outcome of a fact-based determination; it is quite another to speculate on a condemner's chances of obtaining a change in legislative or regulatory policy. Arguably, then, if an opponent persuades a court that a proposed use is unlawful in this sense, the court may deny the condemner immediate possession for lack of a lawfully possible public use of the property. This may require a court in a condemnation case to determine the legality of a proposed land use, a determination otherwise assigned to LUBA, for the limited purposes of the condemnation case before it, though the court's determination would not bind LUBA in exercising its own responsibilities. While this procedure departs from normal rules of primary agency jurisdiction, such a policy favoring speedy decision is implicit in providing any procedure for immediate possession. In the present mandamus proceeding, however, this court has no basis for concluding that such a showing was made to the defendant judge. There is an allegation, not essential to the petition or to the writ, that the landowners objected in the circuit court that the proposed use would violate the zoning of the property, but nothing in the writ or in the responding pleadings and affidavits in this court asserts that such a legal obstacle was or could be established. On the record before this court, we cannot hold that defendant had a sufficient reason to deny the city's demand for an order of immediate possession.