Opinion ID: 71219
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Physical Occupation

Text: 12 NPL alleges that the County commandeered the property by conspiring with LaLonde, the airport tenant, to ensure his continued occupation of the property beyond the expiration of his lease, and by accepting rents from LaLonde, thereby exercising dominion over property which was actually NPL's. We conclude that NPL is, at this time, due no compensation on this physical occupation theory. 13 By now it is beyond question that a permanent physical occupation of private property by the state constitutes a taking for which a landowner must be compensated. See Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1015, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 2893, 120 L.Ed.2d 798 (1992) (takings clause requires compensation for regulations that compel the property owner to suffer a physical 'invasion' of his property); Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 434, 102 S.Ct. 3164, 3175, 73 L.Ed.2d 868 (1982) ([W]hen the character of the governmental action is a permanent physical occupation of property, our cases uniformly have found a taking to the extent of the occupation....) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). We point out, however, that NPL's property has not been physically occupied in the traditional sense. Loretto is an inapt analogy: the landowner there could not exclude the cables from his property, at any cost; here, the airport zoning allowed NPL, if it chose, to let the property sit completely empty. The County did not directly physically occupy anything. Cf. id. at 436, 102 S.Ct. at 3176 ([S]uch [a physical] occupation is qualitatively more severe than a regulation of the use of property....). 14 And, we decline now to address NPL's variation on this theory: that the County effected a physical occupation by conspiring with LaLonde to ensure LaLonde's continued presence on NPL's land and receiving rents on that land. 4 Assuming that the takings clause would mandate compensation for rents unlawfully received by a governmental entity for land not belonging to it, NPL has failed to show that a claim of this nature is now ripe. Specifically, nothing has been called to our attention in the record to show that NPL, by state law procedures, tried and failed to get just compensation for this rent-taking activity--which we see as involving a different theory from that underlying the regulatory taking accomplished by the zoning ordinance. See generally Williamson, 473 U.S. at 195, 105 S.Ct. at 3121 ([A] property owner has not suffered a violation of the Just Compensation Clause until the owner has unsuccessfully attempted to obtain just compensation through the procedures provided by the State for obtaining such compensation....). With no indication that Florida property law or tort law deny recourse to one whose property is unlawfully leased by someone, including a government subdivision, to a third party, we cannot consider whether the Fifth Amendment would allow some compensation for that act. 15