Opinion ID: 65335
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ripeness of Takings Claims

Text: The district court relied exclusively on the traditional case-and-controversy analysis in determining whether Severance's claims are ripe. The Supreme Court, however, has adopted a special, two-prong test for evaluating ripeness under the Takings Clause. See Williamson County Reg'l Planning Comm'n v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 172, 186, 194, 105 S.Ct. 3108, 3116, 3120-21, 87 L.Ed.2d 126 (1985). A takings claim is not ripe until (1) the relevant governmental unit has reached a final decision as to how the regulation will be applied to the landowner, and (2) the plaintiff has sought compensation for the alleged taking through whatever adequate procedures the state provides. Id. At issue here is only the second prong, the adequacy of the state procedures to compensate landowners for their property taken by the government. The Officials contend that Severance's takings claims are not ripe under the state procedures prong because Severance failed to seek just compensation in state court. Severance counters with several arguments. She first asserts that Williamson County 's state procedures rule is inapplicable to her suit because this case involves a physical taking, whereas Williamson County involved a regulatory taking, and because she seeks injunctive rather than compensatory relief. Neither distinction renders Williamson County inapplicable. Severance's argument that the state procedures rule does not apply to a physical takings claim is foreclosed in this circuit. In Urban Developers LLC v. City of Jackson , this court applied the Williamson County ripeness inquiry to an ordinary, non-regulatory physical takings claim, and found the claim unripe under the test's second prong. 468 F.3d at 294-95; accord Peters v. Village of Clifton, 498 F.3d 727, 733 (7th Cir.2007) (applying Williamson County 's second prong to a physical takings claim); Pascoag Reservoir & Dam, LLC v. Rhode Island, 337 F.3d 87, 91 (1st Cir.2003) (same); Daniel v. County of Santa Barbara, 288 F.3d 375, 382 (9th Cir.2002) (same); Arnett v. Myers, 281 F.3d 552, 563 (6th Cir.2002) (same). Severance also contends that Williamson County 's state procedure rule is inapplicable because she seeks only injunctive and declaratory relief, whereas the claimant in Williamson County sought compensatory damages. Severance does not explain why this distinction should be of consequence, nor does she cite any authority to support her position. Several other circuits have held to the contrary by applying Williamson County to claims seeking injunctive or declaratory relief. See Peters, 498 F.3d at 730; von Kerssenbrock-Praschma v. Saunders, 121 F.3d 373, 379 (8th Cir.1997); Daniel, 288 F.3d at 384-85; Bickerstaff Clay Prods. Co. v. Harris County, 89 F.3d 1481, 1490 (11th Cir.1996). Moreover, in crafting the state procedures requirement in Williamson County, the Supreme Court relied on Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U.S. 986, 1018 n. 21, 104 S.Ct. 2862, 2881 n. 21, 81 L.Ed.2d 815 (1984), a case in which the plaintiff sought only injunctive and declaratory relief. We must reject her proffered distinction. Severance next asserts that even if Williamson County 's state procedures requirement applies to all takings claims, the requirement is satisfied here. Under Williamson County, a property owner need not avail himself of state procedures before pursuing a takings claim in federal court if he can demonstrate that the state's procedures for seeking compensation are unavailable or inadequate. 473 U.S. at 197, 105 S.Ct. at 3122. Severance maintains that Williamson County should be construed only to require pursuit of administrative compensation procedures, not state-court litigation. Because neither the OBA nor any administrative rule prescribes an administrative procedure for seeking compensation from the state, Severance contends that state procedures are unavailable and her claims are ripe. This argument is irreconcilable with Williamson County itself, which held a takings claim premature because the parties failed to use Tennessee's judicial inverse condemnation procedure. It is also at odds with multiple decisions of this court that found takings claims unripe when the claimant failed to seek compensation in state courts before filing a federal claim. See, e.g., Urban Developers, 468 F.3d at 295; Bryan v. City of Madison, 213 F.3d 267, 276 n. 16 (5th Cir.2000). Nonetheless, Severance asserts that requiring her first to litigate in state court would, through the principles of res judicata, claim and issue preclusion, effectively bar her from ever litigating her takings claim in federal court. We are not blind to this potential effect. See San Remo Hotel, L.P. v. City & County of San Francisco, 545 U.S. 323, 351, 125 S.Ct. 2491, 2509, 162 L.Ed.2d 315 (2005) (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring) (stating that the court should reconsider the state-litigation requirement, as  Williamson County all but guarantees that claimants will be unable to utilize the federal courts to enforce the Fifth Amendment's just compensation guarantee). However, a majority of the Supreme Court in San Remo were unconcerned by this result, observing that [i]t is hardly a radical notion to recognize that, as a practical matter, a significant number of plaintiffs will necessarily litigate their federal takings claims in state courts. Id. at 346, 125 S.Ct. at 2506. The Court explained that [s]tate courts are fully competent to adjudicate constitutional challenges to local land-use decisions, and [i]ndeed, state courts undoubtedly have more experience than federal courts do in resolving the complex factual, technical, and legal questions implicated by property regulation. Id. at 347, 125 S.Ct. at 2507. Thus, unless the Supreme Court overrules the state procedures requirement, we are bound to give effect to it. Severance next argues that Texas's procedures are inadequate because state courts would undoubtedly deny compensation if she were to seek it. The Officials counter that the inadequacy exception to the state procedures rule applies only when a state court claim does not exist at all, i.e., there is no state court vehicle for asserting the relevant claim, not when the plaintiff believes an available procedure will be unsuccessful. Some circuits subscribe to the state's construction, [6] but this court has adopted a less restrictive definition of inadequate. In Samaad v. City of Dallas, we found merit in Williamson County 's implicit conclusion that the mere existence of some compensation mechanism does not necessarily render those procedures adequate. 940 F.2d 925, 934 (5th Cir.1991). Rather, inadequate procedures are those that almost certainly will not justly compensate the claimant. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Our cases have therefore examined state law to determine whether available courts unquestionably would afford [the plaintiff] no remedy. Id. at 935; see also Rolf v. City of San Antonio, 77 F.3d 823, 827 (5th Cir.1996). [7] Turning to that inquiry, Severance, who bears the burden of proof, asserts that Texas courts have uniformly held that no taking results when state officials conclude that an OBA beach access easement has rolled over private property. But the Texas Supreme Court has not yet addressed whether imposition of the rolling easement is consistent with state law or whether compensation must be awarded when the easement moves onto previously unencumbered property. Indeed, the state Supreme Court appears to have avoided ruling on these issues whose resolution is vital to the rights of thousands of Texas beachfront property owners. While three intermediate appellate courts have upheld the imposition of a rolling easement and concluded that it does not effect a taking, the decisions offered little to no analysis of the takings issue. See Arrington v. Mattox, 767 S.W.2d 957, 958-59 (Tex.App.Austin 1989); Matcha v. Mattox, 711 S.W.2d 95, 101 (Tex.App.Austin 1986); Moody v. White, 593 S.W.2d 372, 379-80 (Tex.Civ. App.Corpus Christi 1979). [8] In addition, two assumptions on which these courts found no taking are open to debate. One assumption of these courts is that the rolling easement doctrine inheres in longstanding principles of Texas common law and is not a construction of the OBA. See Arrington, 767 S.W.2d at 958; Matcha, 711 S.W.2d at 101. In the seminal case establishing that easements shift as the natural shoreline shifts, the court stated that [c]ourts have upheld the concept of a rolling easement along rivers and the sea for many years, suggesting it was deciding whether the rolling easement was a product of common law. Feinman, 717 S.W.2d at 110-11. Feinman, however, ultimately characterized the rolling easement as implicit in the Act. Id. at 111. Whether the public's beach access easement arises by virtue of common law and under what theoryprescription, implied dedication, custom or the OBA itselfis a critical component of takings analysis, yet the state courts' decisions are utterly inconsistent. [9] The second arguable assumption is that the rolling easement may obliterate the landowner's improvements, e.g., by requiring removal of entire houses that when built were on the landward side of the vegetation line. The Seaway case, which first carefully construed the OBA's reach in regard to Galveston's West Beach, held only that a public easement had existed over the dry beach by implied dedication or prescription. In so holding, the court noted more than once that the beach's tide and vegetation boundaries had remained essentially stable for two hundred years or more, the stability interrupted only by occasional, temporary changes caused by storms. Seaway, 375 S.W.2d at 931. See also Moody, 593 S.W.2d at 379 (citing Seaway to support the proposition that there is considerable testimony in the record which establishes the stability of the beach in question). Seaway, in fact, declined to consider the constitutionality of the OBA precisely because the state's easement in that case was proved with findings, inter alia, that a beach had remained in substantially the same geographical position since the time of the Jones [and] Hall grant; that the mean high water line has not advanced landward since July 31, 1931; that since November 28, 1840[,] there has been no landward advance of the mean high tide in the area used as a public way; and [t]here has been no net erosion along the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. Seaway, 375 S.W.2d at 927. Given the uncertainty and ambiguity of Texas law concerning rolling easements and the takings consequences thereof, the Texas Supreme Court might award relief under the facts Severance has alleged. See Rolf, 77 F.3d at 827 (dismissing a takings claim as unripe where the Texas Supreme Court had not yet addressed the plaintiff's exact claim). Because we cannot say with certainty that Severance would be denied compensation if she were to bring her claims in state court, her takings claim is premature in this court. [10]