Opinion ID: 2691733
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: First Mandamus Case

Text: {¶ 14} Shortly after the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Coles, the Coleses, Buffalo Prairie, and certain other property owners who are successors to the canal-company property – but not including the relators in the present mandamus case – filed an action in this court for a writ of mandamus to compel the board of park commissioners and its director-secretary to either (1) commence an appropriation proceeding to compensate them for the board’s taking of their property or (2) relinquish the seized property and direct the park district not to file an eminent-domain action to appropriate their property. {¶ 15} In November 2007, we granted a writ of mandamus to compel the board to commence an appropriation proceeding to compensate the property 5 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO owners for an involuntary taking of their property. State ex rel. Coles v. Granville, 116 Ohio St.3d 231, 2007-Ohio-6057, 877 N.E.2d 968, ¶ 59. We found that the property owners had “established that by employing their private property for public use as a recreational trail, the board of park commissioners has taken their property.”