Opinion ID: 508854
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Supreme Court Caselaw

Text: 21 Although not providing an express definition of horizontal limits of the bed of a navigable stream as it applies specifically to the navigational servitude, Supreme Court precedent properly limits the range of the navigational servitude to the land beneath and within the navigable stream's high-water mark. In recognizing that there are limits to the horizontal scope of the servitude, the Court has stated: 22 Since the privilege or servitude only encompasses the exercise of this federal power with respect to the stream itself and the lands beneath and within its high-water mark, the Government must compensate for any taking of fast lands which results from the exercise of the power. This was the rationale of United States v. Kansas City [Life] Ins. Co., 339 U.S. 799 [70 S.Ct. 885, 94 L.Ed. 1277] [1950], where the Court held that when a navigable stream was raised by the Government to its ordinary high-water mark and maintained continuously at that level in the interest of navigation, the Government was liable for the effects of that change [in the water level] upon private property beyond the bed of the stream. 339 U.S. at 800-801, 70 S.Ct. at 886. 23 United States v. Virginia Electric & Power Co., 365 U.S. 624, 628, 81 S.Ct. 784, 788, 5 L.Ed.2d 838 (1961) (emphasis added). 24 The case cited above, United States v. Kansas City Life Insurance Co., 339 U.S. 799, 70 S.Ct. 885, 94 L.Ed. 1277 (1950), thus provides a clear application of the Supreme Court's view of the horizontal and vertical limits on the scope of a stream bed, and of the corresponding scope of the navigational servitude. The Court in Kansas City Life allowed recovery for damage to land located on a non-navigable tributary of the Mississippi River resulting from the artificial maintenance of the Mississippi at its high-water level. The raised water level in the river also raised the local water table which blocked the drainage of the affected parcel's surface and subsurface waters, thereby causing the destruction of the land's agricultural value. The Court viewed the subsurface water flow to result in a subsurface invasion of the respondent's land no less destructive than a surface flooding. Since the land, not in the bed of a navigable stream, was not burdened with the navigational servitude, the Court held that a taking had occurred. 339 U.S. at 802-03, 810, 70 S.Ct. at 887, 891. Similarly, the Payne property alleged as lost due to government-caused erosion in this case was outside the bed of the Tombigbee River and therefore unaffected by the navigational servitude. 25 The government nevertheless argues that the result here should be controlled by the Supreme Court's decision in Bedford v. United States, 192 U.S. 217, 24 S.Ct. 238, 48 L.Ed. 414 (1904), in which the Court rejected a claim by landowners along the Mississippi River for compensation for erosion and flooding damages. In Bedford, the Mississippi River had, through natural causes, begun to reroute itself in a manner which threatened to cut off the channel of the river which passed by the town of Vicksburg. The government, in an effort to preserve navigable water in the Vicksburg channel, constructed revetments near the cutoff point to prevent further erosion there. The appellants' land was located 6 miles downstream from the cutoff point near where the new cutoff channel rejoined the original river channel. Because the new channel joined the main channel at a sharp angle, erosion at that point was greatly increased. The government's upstream revetment fixed the location and direction of the cutoff channel and the increased erosion at the downstream intersection ultimately washed away or flooded 2,300 acres of appellants' land. 26 The Supreme Court affirmed a judgment in favor of the government on the grounds that the government's revetment was constructed along the banks of the river in order to preserve the natural course of the river, and was therefore distinguishable from construction in the river bed which obstructed or altered the natural flow. 192 U.S. at 225, 24 S.Ct. at 240. The appellants had also contended that if erosion had not been halted at the cutoff point, the angle at which the cutoff channel would have joined the main channel would have gradually lessened, reducing the amount of damage to their property. The Supreme Court found any increased injury due to the revetments to be conjectural and only an incidental consequence of [the government's works]. Id. Thus, the present facts as alleged are distinguishable from those in Bedford since the damages to the Payne property must be assumed here to be the direct consequence of governmental construction which altered rather than preserved the flow course of the Tombigbee River. 8 27 Strong precedent supports our conclusion that the actual construction equipment or work need not directly encroach upon the property in question before a taking by the government can be deemed to have occurred. See also United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256, 66 S.Ct. 1062, 90 L.Ed. 1206 (1946). We also reject the offered view that no compensation can ever be owed for the consequential effects of construction activities to further navigation undertaken solely within the boundaries of a river bed subject to the navigational servitude. In fact, the latter argument completely misses the mark. In Tri-State Materials Corp. v. United States, 550 F.2d 1, 213 Ct.Cl. 1 (1977), this court's predecessor held that the government could not avoid liability on the basis of the navigational servitude where a dam built to enhance navigability on a river caused plaintiff's sand and gravel mine, which was located outside the bed of a navigable stream, to flood as the result of restricted subterranean drainage. As observed by the Court of Claims, it is not the location of the cause of the damage that is relevant, but the location and permanence of the effect of the government action causing the damage that is the proper focus of the taking analysis. Id. at 4; see also United States v. Cress, 243 U.S. 316, 37 S.Ct. 380, 61 L.Ed. 746 (1917); Goose Creek Hunting Club, Inc. v. United States, 518 F.2d 579, 583, 207 Ct.Cl. 323 (1975). 28 The government also argues that Payne had no property interest in the uninterrupted natural flow of the Tombigbee River as against the government's authority to improve navigation under its dominant servitude. However, that the instrument of the taking is the increased flow of the stream does not place the case within the purview of the Twin City Power line of cases. Those cases deal with the value of the property claimed to have been taken, not the manner in which it was taken. Tri-State, 550 F.2d at 7-8. We think that the permanent washing away of fast land and a house as the result of government construction causing an increased river velocity is well within the scope of the Tri-State holding, which makes clear that it is the permanence of the consequences of the Government act [that] is controlling, and there is no additional requirement that the instrumentality of the consequence be purely a governmental one. Id. at 4 (emphasis in original) (citing Wilfong v. United States, 480 F.2d 1326, 1329, 202 Ct.Cl. 616 (1973)). 29 Therefore, based on the above analysis, we conclude that Supreme Court precedent undeniably requires our holding that the navigational servitude does not provide a blanket exception to the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment where improvements to navigation made by the government result in erosion to land located above or outside the bed of the stream as delineated by the high-water mark at the time of the construction. Actually, our research and analysis also reveal that nearly all of our own precedents are in accord with those of the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, allowing the navigational servitude to extend to land beyond the high-water mark outside the bed of the navigable water is the specific issue that was decided incorrectly by the Court of Claims in Pitman and by this court in Ballam. Not surprisingly, these are the two decisions which the Claims Court felt bound to follow in the present case, unavoidably leading to an incorrect result. E. The Error in Pitman and Ballam 1. Pitman v. United States 30 Pitman was an inverse condemnation suit involving beachfront property on the east coast of Florida, seeking compensation for 4 acres of eroded property following interruption of the southerly littoral drift by government construction of channel jetties north of the property. The Court of Claims denied recovery, stating that while a riparian owner has a right to have navigable waters come to him unchanged in their natural condition as against other riparian owners, he has no such right against the paramount power of the United States to improve navigation. 457 F.2d at 977 (citing W.A. Ross Constr. Co. v. Yearsley, 103 F.2d 589 (8th Cir.1939), aff'd, 309 U.S. 18, 60 S.Ct. 413, 84 L.Ed. 554 (1940), and Franklin v. United States, 101 F.2d 459 (6th Cir.), aff'd, 308 U.S. 516, 60 S.Ct. 170, 84 L.Ed. 439 (1939)). However, examination reveals that the Supreme Court's affirmances of the judgments in Ross and Franklin were on entirely different grounds than those described in the two Court of Appeals opinions relied on by the Court of Claims in Pitman. 9 Further examination of the now-questioned Court of Appeals opinions in Ross and Franklin indicates that the earlier Supreme Court opinions relied on in those cases for the broad proposition subsequently adopted in Pitman and at issue here do not support the extension made by those courts. Each is distinguishable from the present alleged facts of government-caused erosion outside the natural stream bed. 31 Finally, under the facts of Pitman, most of the land lost was shorefront that existed solely because of the ocean's littoral drift. However, the sand comprising that shorefront property is in a constant state of flux, as existing sand is moved southward by the littoral drift's currents and new sand from the north is deposited in its place. The loss of such shorefront was due to the blocking of the northern replacement sand, causing the drift to remove more sand than it replaced. Since the sand comprising the lost shorefront was continually being deposited and moved by the ocean's action, it necessarily lay below the ocean's high-water mark and within the bed of the ocean. As such, its loss would not entitle the riparian owner to compensation under any of the relevant caselaw. 10 Although the Court of Claims in Pitman was not incorrect in relying on the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Twin City Power Co., 350 U.S. 222, 225-26, 76 S.Ct. 259, 261, 100 L.Ed. 240 (1956), to reject recovery since the shoreland sand was present solely due to the uninterrupted flow of the ocean, 457 F.2d at 978, the court improperly extended that same logic to prevent compensation for erosion loss of land located above the ocean's high-water mark. 2. Ballam v. United States 32 In addition to its reliance on Pitman, the Claims Court concluded that this court's decision in Ballam v. United States, 806 F.2d 1017 (Fed.Cir.1986), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 1889, 95 L.Ed.2d 496 (1987), required the dismissal of the Payne complaint on the pleadings. In Ballam, the government was granted an easement across Mrs. Ballam's land in which to construct and maintain an artificial canal which was to become part of the navigable waters of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. Following construction of the canal, it was discovered that the wave wash from passing boats on the canal caused significant erosion to Mrs. Ballam's land, and ultimately eroded fast lands outside the bounds of the easement. In the district court, Mrs. Ballam was awarded damages for the taking of the land outside the easement lost to the erosion and for the cost of protecting the bank from further erosion. This court reversed. 33 If this court in Ballam had adopted the view of the Fourth Circuit majority in Ballam v. United States, 747 F.2d 915 (4th Cir.1984), vacated for lack of jurisdiction, 474 U.S. 1078, 106 S.Ct. 844, 88 L.Ed.2d 886 (1986), 11 that there was no showing that the United States directly and proximately caused the erosion damage, then the case could be distinguished on that basis. Cf. Sanguinetti v. United States, 264 U.S. 146, 149-50, 44 S.Ct. 264, 265, 68 L.Ed. 608 (1924); Bartz v. United States, 633 F.2d 571, 577-78, 224 Ct.Cl. 583 (1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 967, 101 S.Ct. 1484, 67 L.Ed.2d 616 (1981); Yazel v. United States, 93 F.Supp. 1000, 118 Ct.Cl. 59 (1950). Since here we must presume that the erosion to Ms. Payne's property was caused by the government, no further discussion of Ballam would be necessary. Unfortunately, this court in Ballam chose instead to rely on Pitman: 34 It hardly is pretended that the government would be responsible to landowners on natural navigable water for erosion caused by public works which do not themselves impinge on such upland but only cause water to do so by waves or currents causing erosion. The appellee, and the court below, cite no such cases. There is one the other way, a binding precedent in this court ... Pitman v. United States, 457 F.2d 975, 198 Ct.Cl. 82 (1972). 35 806 F.2d at 1021 (emphasis added). 36 However, the district court in Ballam had indeed cited and relied on United States v. Dickinson, 331 U.S. 745, 67 S.Ct. 1382, 91 L.Ed. 1789 (1947). See Ballam v. United States, 552 F.Supp. 390, 392 (D.S.C.1982). In Dickinson, the government had dammed a river and raised the water level until it flooded Dickinson's land, without condemning the land beforehand. Dickinson and other neighboring landowners brought suit for compensation for the taking of their land, based on the flooding and accompanying erosion. The district court awarded damages for the land permanently flooded, for a flowage easement over other land intermittently flooded, and for the cost of constructing protection on the land above the easement found to be damaged from erosion as a direct and proximate cause of taking of the land permanently flooded. The Fourth Circuit affirmed. 152 F.2d 865 (4th Cir.1946). 37 Before the Supreme Court, inter alia, the government in Dickinson challenged the award of damages based on the erosion to land outside the easement. In affirming the judgment, the Court made the following observations: 38 [The Government] regards [the erosion damage] as consequential, to be borne without any right to compensation. Of course, payment need only be made for what is taken, but for all that the Government takes it must pay. When it takes property by flooding, it takes the land which it permanently floods as well as that which inevitably washes away as a result of that flooding. The mere fact that all the United States needs and physically appropriates is the land up to the new level of the river, does not determine what in nature it has taken. If the Government cannot take the acreage it wants without also washing away more, that more becomes part of the taking. 39 331 U.S. at 750, 67 S.Ct. at 1385-86 (citation omitted). Finally, with respect to the measure of damages for the erosion, the Court stated [i]f the resulting erosion which, as a practical matter, constituted part of the taking was in fact preventable by prudent measures, the cost of that prevention is a proper basis for determining the damage. Id. at 751, 67 S.Ct. at 1386. 40 Regrettably, the relevance of Dickinson to the situation in Ballam went unrecognized by this court. Perhaps seduced by the unrestrained application of the navigational servitude without horizontal bounds in Pitman, this court in Ballam determined that [t]he government does not claim a right to erode Mrs. Ballam's land. 806 F.2d at 1021. However, the practical effect of our decision was to grant to the government the very right to erode which it allegedly did not claim, and left Mrs. Ballam's property rights in her land outside the easement unenforceable. The court further concluded that [t]he geographical scope of the easement is irrelevant [for if] Mrs. Ballam has the property right she claims at all, it would seem it would be equally valid for land within the easement area, but not yet used for canal enlargement or spoil; she could have that covered by revetment at government expense also. Id. at 1022. 41 However, the geographical scope of the easement was of critical relevance and should have been the determinative issue in Ballam. Only one revetment would have been needed to prevent bank erosion and the issue was who should pay for its placement, not where or when the revetment should be placed. In light of the easement granted, the government would have been free to allow the wave erosion to extend to the limits of the easement in hopes that the widening channel would cause the eroding energy of the waves to dissipate before reaching shore. However, once the erosion resulting directly from the government's construction of the artificial waterway reached the land outside the easement right-of-way, Dickinson instructs that the cost of revetments necessary to protect land outside the easement be borne by the government. It should make no difference to the analysis or the result that the government-caused erosion in Dickinson extended beyond the vertical limits of the easement granted and that the erosion in Ballam extended beyond the horizontal limits of the easement. 12 42 As a final point, the government points to the existence of a flowage easement in the present case, which the government acquired from Ms. Payne's predecessor-in-interest, and argues that the easement bars any further liability to the government for damage resulting from the construction-related flooding of the Payne property since the property remains subject to the easement. However, the government acquired the right to flood and submerge the land below elevation 76 mean sea level permanently and the additional right to overflow, flood, and submerge the tracts of land above elevation 76 occasionally. The government admits that the Payne house was built above and beyond mean sea level 76. Since the government only acquired a right to flood the land above elevation 76 occasionally, the easement by its terms does not contemplate a complete and permanent flooding of the land above elevation 76 as alleged to have occurred here. So, similar to the situation in Dickinson, while the flowage easement would limit any final calculation of damages to the difference between the complete loss of the land due to permanent flooding and the previously compensated loss associated with occasional flooding, it cannot be used to bar recovery of damages altogether. F. Summary 43 Thus, in addition to finding Dickinson indistinguishable in substance from Pitman, Ballam, and the basic facts alleged in the present complaint, we fail to discern valid distinctions between the undermining and permanent loss of fast land (and a house) due to government-caused erosion and the permanent flooding of fast land due to government improvements to navigation found to be compensable by the Supreme Court. See, e.g., United States v. Grizzard, 219 U.S. 180, 31 S.Ct. 162, 55 L.Ed. 165 (1911) (compensation allowed for land taken and for loss of easement due to flooding); Pumpelly v. Green Bay Co., 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 166, 20 L.Ed. 557 (1872) (compensation for land permanently flooded). Certainly Ms. Payne's undercut land and washed-away house are no less useless than would be intact but permanently flooded land which was found to have been the subject of a Fifth Amendment taking in those cases. Since the Supreme Court in Kansas City Life expressly concluded that there was a taking when government improvements to navigation caused underground seepage into land below the high-water mark but outside the stream bed, thus rendering the land useless, it is difficult to understand how erosion, itself a much more violent invasion than seepage, of land below the high-water mark yet outside the stream bed can never constitute a compensable taking. Since the decisions in Pitman and Ballam make such distinctions and require such conclusions, we hereby overrule those decisions to the extent that they allow the navigational servitude to reach fast land above and outside the bed of navigable water. 13 44 As the Supreme Court observed in Kaiser Aetna, decided after Pitman, this Court has never held that the navigational servitude creates a blanket exception to the Takings Clause whenever Congress exercises its Commerce Clause authority to promote navigation. 444 U.S. at 172, 100 S.Ct. at 389. Although the Court has held that compensation may not be required as a result of the federal navigational servitude for alleged takings involving the public right of navigation, id. at 175, 100 S.Ct. at 390, it is clear that whether the government action went so far as to amount to a taking is a separate and distinct inquiry from the existence of the navigational servitude itself, id. at 174, 100 S.Ct. at 390. The Court itself recognizes its inability to  'develop any set formula for determining when justice and fairness require that economic injuries caused by public action be compensated by the government, rather than remain disproportionately concentrated on a few persons.'  Id. at 175, 100 S.Ct. at 390 (quoting Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 124, 98 S.Ct. 2646, 2659, 57 L.Ed.2d 631 (1978)); Pete v. United States, 531 F.2d 1018, 1034, 209 Ct.Cl. 270 (1976) (whether a taking has occurred depends on the particular circumstances presented). Such taking inquiries are often decided on the basis of narrow, factual distinctions, Kaiser Aetna, 444 U.S. at 175, 100 S.Ct. at 390, and erosion issues are inherently factual. Loesch v. United States, 645 F.2d 905, 913, 227 Ct.Cl. 34, cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1099, 102 S.Ct. 672, 7 L.Ed.2d 640 (1981). As factual issues, they are rarely proper for resolution on the pleadings. G. One Final Issue 45 The parties focused their arguments in this appeal on the issue that was the linchpin of the Claims Court decision: whether the government's navigational servitude was of sufficient scope to cover the alleged taking of Payne's property under the alleged facts. However, since a remand will necessarily be required in light of our conclusions above, we feel it proper to address one other issue raised in this appeal that may continue to be an issue on remand. Appellant asserts in his brief that the navigation servitude cannot apply in this case because that portion of the Tombigbee River at issue here was not navigable until after the Corps had dredged, rechanneled, and made artificial cuts to construct the waterway. 14 46 The government's assertion that there is nothing in the record to support the claim that the river was not navigable prior to construction is of dubious value since we are reviewing a judgment on the pleadings and the particular facts which would form the record on that issue have yet to be adduced. The Eleventh Circuit's decision focused solely on whether the government's decision not to conduct preconstruction studies was discretionary and any statements regarding the navigability of the Tombigbee River prior to the construction were not actually litigated nor necessary to the decision in that case. See Mother's Restaurant Inc. v. Mama's Pizza, Inc., 723 F.2d 1566, 1569-70, 221 USPQ 394, 397 (Fed.Cir.1983). Thus, such statements cannot serve under the principles of issue preclusion to bind the present parties with respect to the specific river segment at issue here. 47 It is undisputed that the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Project was authorized by Congress in 1946 as an improvement for navigation purposes. See Payne, 730 F.2d at 1435, 1437. However, it does not appear altogether incongruous that the creation of navigable water where there was none before could be deemed an improvement to navigation. Nevertheless, relying on Ex parte Boyer, 109 U.S. 629, 3 S.Ct. 434, 27 L.Ed. 1056 (1884), and Ballam, the government asserts that its navigational servitude would still dominate Payne's private property interests even if it is assumed that the river was nonnavigable prior to the Corps' construction. Yet, as the Supreme Court cautioned in Kaiser Aetna, 444 U.S. at 170-71, 100 S.Ct. at 388, it is important to appraise the purpose for which the concept of navigability was invoked in a particular case before attempting to delimit the bounds of the navigational servitude. 48 In Boyer, the Supreme Court held that a navigable, artificial canal used in interstate commerce was public water of the United States and within the legitimate scope of admiralty jurisdiction of the federal courts. There was no question that navigability existed at the time of the incident giving rise to the suit in Boyer and the fact that the canal was not navigable or did not exist at some time prior to the incident made no difference to whether the federal court had jurisdiction. Here, if navigability did not exist when the events giving rise to the taking commenced, the navigational servitude cannot apply. To allow the navigational servitude to attach to nonnavigable water or land which is being made navigable would allow the government to build artificial canals for use in interstate commerce without ever paying just compensation for the land in which a canal was built. Thus, a successful demonstration by the appellant that the river was nonnavigable prior to construction would be a valid basis for upholding the appellant's general claim that the government's navigational servitude would not foreclose recovery of compensation for a taking by the government. 49 Navigability is a question of fact determined from the particular circumstances of each case, United States v. Utah, 283 U.S. 64, 87, 51 S.Ct. 438, 445, 75 L.Ed. 844 (1931); however, there are also questions of law inseparable from the particular facts to which they are applied. Loving v. Alexander, 745 F.2d 861, 865 (4th Cir.1984) (citing United States v. Appalachian Elec. Power Co., 311 U.S. 377, 404, 61 S.Ct. 291, 297, 85 L.Ed. 243 (1940)). At this stage of the proceeding, we are unable to reach the conclusion necessarily urged by the government that there are no possible facts which could be proved to support the assertion that the Tombigbee was only made navigable by the Corps' construction. Therefore, whether the Tombigbee River was navigable water prior to the commencement of the construction by the Corps of Engineers should also be considered an open question by the Claims Court on remand.