Opinion ID: 2585381
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Majority's Gunwall Analysis and Property Rights in Washington.

Text: Without saying why it is necessary to do so, the majority undertakes an analysis pursuant to State v. Gunwall, 106 Wash.2d 54, 720 P.2d 808 (1986). The original intent of a Gunwall analysis was to determine whether the constitution of the State of Washington should be considered as extending broader rights to its citizens than does the United States Constitution. Id. at 61, 720 P.2d 808. The majority looks at the first sentence of WASH. CONST. art. I, § 16Private property shall not be taken for private use [4] and concludes our constitution provides more protection for private property owners than does the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. How the majority gets there is a monumental puzzle, because the Fifth Amendment does not mention private use. The Fifth Amendment speaks only of public use: nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. The majority tells us that we have taken a much more restrictive view of the meaning of public use than has the United States Supreme Court. Majority op. at 189. The majority is quite right. Compare, e.g., In re Petition of Seattle, 96 Wash.2d 616, 627, 638 P.2d 549 (1981) (holding a beneficial use is not necessarily a public use), with Haw. Hous. Auth. v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229, 242, 104 S.Ct. 2321, 81 L.Ed.2d 186 (1984) (public use requirement coterminous with the scope of a sovereign's police powers.). [5] But the term public use does not appear in the first sentence of art. I, § 16, the provision the majority says is key to its analysis. It would have been a more revealing and more fruitful exercise for the majority to have compared the constitutional meaning of the sentence it relies on in our constitutionPrivate property shall not be taken for private usewith the United States Supreme Court's treatment of that concept. In 1896, the Court addressed the question of takings for private use and said categorically: The taking by a state of the private property of one person or corporation, without the owner's consent, for the private use of another, is not due process of law, and is a violation of the fourteenth article of amendment of the constitution of the United States. M. Pac. Ry. Co. v. State of Neb., 164 U.S. 403, 417, 17 S.Ct. 130, 41 L.Ed. 489 (1896). This proposition became so well entrenched in federal jurisprudence that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was able to say 100 years later: It is overwhelmingly clear from more than a century of precedent that the government violates the Constitution when it takes private property for private use.... Armendariz v. Penman, 75 F.3d 1311, 1320-21 (9th Cir.1996). Indeed, there is a primeval notion in American law to the effect that the taking of private property for private use is not even a permissible action of government. In a famous passage, Justice Samuel Chase said in Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, 388, 1 L.Ed. 648 (1798): An ACT of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority. The obligation of a law in governments established on express compact, and on republican principles, must be determined by the nature of the power, on which it is founded. A few instances will suffice to explain what I mean. A law that punished a citizen for an innocent action, or, in other words, for an act, which, when done, was in violation of no existing law; a law that destroys, or impairs, the lawful private contracts of citizens; a law that makes a man a Judge in his own cause; or a law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with SUCH powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it. The genius, the nature, and the spirit, of our State Governments, amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation; and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. Justice Chase was speaking here not of constitutional law, but of natural law, of powers no government may exercise because general principles of law and reason forbid them. [6] The aphorism about the prohibition against taking from A and giving to B is enshrined in American law. Justice Story said in 1829: We know of no case, in which a legislative act to transfer the property of A. to B. without his consent, has ever been held a constitutional exercise of legislative power, in any state in the Union. Wilkinson v. Leland, 27 U.S. (2 Pet.) 627, 657, 7 L.Ed. 542 (1829). The Supreme Court has cited Chase's aphorism as recently as 1998. See Eastern Enters. v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498, 522, 118 S.Ct. 2131, 141 L.Ed.2d 451 (1998). Although there can be little argument in justification of the idea the government may arbitrarily take your private property and give it over to someone else's private use (as opposed to public use), Chase's aphorism has been employed on occasion to pernicious effect. For example, in invalidating New York's pioneering worker's compensation law, the New York Court of Appeals gave as one of the invalidating reasons the requirement for employers to pay premiums into the fund to pay injured workers was taking the property of A. and giving it to B., and that cannot be done under our Constitutions. Ives v. S. Buffalo Ry. Co., 201 N.Y. 271, 94 N.E. 431, 440 (1911). By contrast, that same year our predecessors on this Court, true to their Progressive Era and Populist roots, rejected similar property rights arguments to become the first court in the country to uphold the constitutionality of worker's compensation legislation. See State v. Clausen, 65 Wash. 156, 184-88, 117 P. 1101 (1911) (`[I]t is established by a series of cases that an ulterior public advantage may justify a comparatively insignificant taking of private property for what, in its immediate purpose, is a private use.' (quoting Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U.S. 104, 110, 31 S.Ct. 186, 55 L.Ed. 112 (1911) (Holmes, J.)). [7] Against that background, we turn to Washington's constitutional provision, Private property shall not be taken for private use. That is plain enough, but that is not all the first sentence of art. I, § 16 says. The remainder of the sentence goes on to say private property may be taken for private use for private ways of necessity, and for drains, flumes, or ditches on or across the lands of others for agricultural, domestic, or sanitary purposes. But isn't this taking private property from A and giving it to B for private use? Doesn't this provision in our state constitution violate the Fourteenth Amendment per Missouri Pacific Railway? The answer to the first question is yes; the answer to the second question is no. We considered these very questions in Mountain Timber Co. v. Superior Court of Cowlitz County, 77 Wash. 585, 137 P. 994 (1914). Mountain Timber wanted to condemn land belonging to another for use as a logging road. There was no outlet for the company's timber other than over the land of the respondent. See id. at 586, 137 P. 994. A 1913 statute enacted pursuant to art. I, § 16's exception for private ways of necessity allowed as much: An owner, or one entitled to the beneficial use, of land which is so situate with respect to the land of another that it is necessary for its proper use and enjoyment to have and maintain a private way of necessity... may condemn and take lands of such other sufficient in area for the construction and maintenance of such private way of necessity, ... The term `private way of necessity,' as used in this act, shall mean and include a right of way on, across, over or through the land of another for means of ingress and egress, and the construction and maintenance thereon of roads, logging roads, flumes, canals, ditches, tunnels, tramways and other structures upon, over and through which timber, stone, minerals or other valuable materials and products may be transported and carried. Mountain Timber, 77 Wash. at 586, 137 P. 994 (quoting Laws of 1913, at 412). The statute provided for compensation for the condemnation. See id. Nevertheless, the owner of the property resisted the condemnation by demurrer, and the trial court refused to permit the condemnation. See id. In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Gose, we began with a recurrence to certain fundamental principles, noting `the power of eminent domain is not a reserved, but an inherent right, a right which pertains to sovereignty as a necessary, constant and inextinguishable attribute.' Id., at 587, 588, 137 P. 994 (quoting 1 JOHN LEWIS, EMINENT DOMAIN § 3 (3d ed.1909)). [8] After saying the power of eminent domain is an inherent attribute of sovereignty, we carefully corrected a misstatement in an earlier case that art. I, § 16 grants the right to take private property for private use. Not so, we said. The proper way to look at it is that the State, as the sovereign, has the inherent power to condemn any land for any use, and that art. I, § 16 carves out a constitutional exception regarding private use. Art. I, § 16 simply excludes private ways of necessity from the exception for private use. See Mountain Timber, 77 Wash. at 590, 137 P. 994. Thus, the challenged statute did nothing more than provide a procedure for what the State had the inherent authority to do. With respect to the federal constitutionality of the statute, we said: The taking of private property for private use for the promotion of the general welfare, upon due notice and hearing and the payment of compensation, [9] is not incompatible with due process of law, as guaranteed by the Federal constitution. Id. at 592, 137 P. 994 (citing Head v. Amoskeag Mfg. Co., 113 U.S. 9, 5 S.Ct. 441, 28 L.Ed. 889 (1885). The general welfare we referred to existed because the road prevents a private individual from bottling up a portion of the resources of the state. Mountain Timber, 77 Wash. at 590, 137 P. 994. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit later affirmed the constitutionality of the statute under the Fourteenth Amendment in Ruddock v. Bloedel Donovan Lumber Mills, 28 F.2d 684, 687 (9th Cir.1928). To summarize the foregoing discussion, we know, pursuant to the Ninth Circuit's strong statement in Armendariz, the taking of private property for private use violates Fourteenth Amendment due process under federal jurisprudence. We also know under WASH. CONST. art. I, § 16, the government may take private property for private use so long as the taking promotes the general welfare and compensation is paid, and that such a taking does not violate Fourteenth Amendment due process. [10] Consequently, one can hardly agree with the majority that our state constitution provides greater protection for private property than the federal constitution. At the very least, the two constitutions provide similar protection. The taking of private property for private use that occurred in Mountain Timber received validation both in Washington's Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.