Opinion ID: 1881821
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Lucas Analysis

Text: In the instant cases both district courts, although reaching different conclusions regarding compensation, applied the takings analysis established in Lucas. [7] The Cities of Miami and St. Petersburg, as well as some of the amici curiae, [8] argue that the closures ordered by the respective NABs are not suitable for treatment under Lucas. Our review of Lucas and the cases proceeding it lead us to the opposite conclusion. In Lucas, the Supreme Court acknowledged the recognition in its takings jurisprudence of at least two forms of regulatory action which require compensation without the usual case-specific inquiry into the public interest advanced in support of the restraint: (1) where the regulation compels the property owner to suffer a physical invasion, or (2) where the regulation denies all economically beneficial or productive use of land. Lucas, 505 U.S. at 1015, 112 S.Ct. 2886. In the latter case, the State can resist compensation only if the regulation proscribe[s] use interests [which] were not part of [the property owner's] title to begin with. Id. at 1027, 112 S.Ct. 2886. [9] Accordingly, a regulation which amounts to a deprivation of all use must ... do no more than duplicate the result that could have been achieved in the courts-by adjacent landowners (or other uniquely affected persons) under the State's law of private nuisance, or by the State under its complementary power to abate nuisances that affect the public generally, or otherwise. Id. at 1029, 112 S.Ct. 2886. This has been labeled the nuisance exception. [10] The property owner in Lucas purchased two residential beachfront lots intending to build single-family homes. Thereafter, South Carolina passed legislation effectively barring any residential development on Lucas's land. 505 U.S. at 1007, 112 S.Ct. 2886. Lucas brought suit in state court claiming that the legislation effected a taking requiring compensation. Id. at 1009. The trial court agreed, finding that Lucas's beachfront lots were rendered valueless by the legislation's ban on construction. The Supreme Court accepted the trial court's factual finding that Lucas's property was rendered valueless in concluding that South Carolina's action warranted treatment under the latter of the two categorical formulations as a deprivation of all economically beneficial or productive use. Consistent with that finding, the Court remanded the case so that the South Carolina courts could determine any background principles of nuisance and property law which would have prohibited Lucas's contemplated uses of the land, thereby absolving the state of its duty to compensate. Id. at 1031, 112 S.Ct. 2886. [11] Whether that categorical analysis is appropriate here turns on whether the temporary closures ordered by the respective NAB's can be characterized as depriving Gihwala and Kablinger of all economically beneficial or productive use of their land. The cities argue that the very temporary nature of the closures precludes such a characterization. Undoubtedly, as noted by the Supreme Court in Lucas, the application of Lucas 's deprivation of all economically beneficial use standard is limited: Justice Stevens criticizes the deprivation of all economically beneficial use as wholly arbitrary, in that [the] landowner whose property is diminished in value 95% recovers nothing, while the landowner who suffers a complete elimination of value recovers the land's full value. This analysis errs in the assumption that the landowner whose deprivation is one step short of complete is not entitled to compensation. Such an owner might not be able to claim the benefit of our categorical formulation, but as we have acknowledged time and again, [t]he economic impact of the regulation on the claimant and ... the extent to which the regulation has interfered with distinct investment-backed expectations are keenly relevant to the takings analysis generally. Id. at 1019 n. 8, 112 S.Ct. 2886. Such a fatal blow to a property's economic value, argue the cities, cannot be struck by a temporary closure like that ordered here by the respective NABs. See, e.g., Florida Rock Industries, Inc. v. United States, 18 F.3d 1560, 1565 (Fed.Cir.1994) (If, however, a regulation prohibits less than all economically beneficial use of the land and causes at most a partial destruction of its value, the case does not come within the Supreme Court's `categorical' taking rule.). In the instant cases the courts determined that the temporary closures issued by the respective NABs could amount to a deprivation of all economic use as that phrase is used in Lucas, relying primarily on the Supreme Court's language in First English Evangelical Lutheran Church v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U.S. 304, 318, 107 S.Ct. 2378, 96 L.Ed.2d 250 (1987): `Temporary' takings which, as here, deny a landowner all use of his property, are not different in kind from permanent takings, for which the Constitution clearly requires compensation. Indeed, this Court has relied on First English in stating that temporary deprivations can constitute takings: A taking occurs where regulation denies substantially all economically beneficial or productive use of land. Moreover, a temporary deprivation may constitute a taking. Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority v. A.G.W.S. Corp., 640 So.2d 54, 58 (Fla.1994). However, the issue is not whether temporary deprivations can constitute takings; it is clear that such regulations can. [12] Instead, the question posed is whether regulations which temporarily deprive one of the use of property can qualify for categorical treatment under Lucas 's deprivation of all economically beneficial or productive use standard. [13] In that vein, the cities counter that the First English court issued the aforementioned temporary taking language in deciding the narrow remedial issue before it, rather than holding that takings of a defined duration can qualify for categorical treatment under Lucas. In First English, a church sought compensation for an alleged regulatory taking after the County of Los Angeles adopted an ordinance prohibiting the building or rebuilding on land owned by the church because of flood concerns. [14] The church alleged that the ordinance deprived it of all use of the affected property, requiring the county to provide just compensation. The California Court of Appeal rejected the church's claim under the authority of Agins v. City of Tiburon, 23 Cal.3d 605, 157 Cal.Rptr. 372, 598 P.2d 25 (1979), aff'd, 447 U.S. 255, 100 S.Ct. 2138, 65 L.Ed.2d 106 (1980). In Agins, the California Supreme Court held that compensation is not required until the challenged regulation or ordinance has been held excessive in an action for declaratory relief or a writ of mandamus and the government has nevertheless decided to continue the regulation in effect. First English, 482 U.S. at 308-09, 107 S.Ct. 2378. The practical effect of the Agins rule was to hold that the Fifth Amendment, as made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, [did] not require compensation as a remedy for `temporary' regulatory takings those regulatory takings which are ultimately invalidated by the courts. Id. at 310, 107 S.Ct. 2378. The Court was previously unable to review the Agins rule because of concerns with finality: Concerns with finality left us unable to reach the remedial question in the earlier cases where we have been asked to consider the rule of Agins. In each of [those] cases, we concluded either that regulations considered to be in issue by the state court did not effect a taking, or that the factual disputes yet to be resolved by state authorities might still lead to the conclusion that no taking had occurred. Id. at 311, 107 S.Ct. 2378 (citations omitted). The Court perceived no such barrier to an examination of the Agins rule in First English, given the California Court of Appeal's affirmance of the trial court's ruling that the church's claim that the ordinance denied it of all use of its property was irrelevant. Id. at 309, 107 S.Ct. 2378. Accordingly, the Court was finally confronted with the narrow question of remedies posed by the application of the Agins rule: The disposition of the case on these grounds isolates the remedial question for our consideration. Id. at 311, 107 S.Ct. 2378. Thus, the issue before the Court in First English was whether a landowner who claims his property has been taken by a land-use regulation can recover damages for the time prior to the time the regulation is determined to constitute a taking. Id. at 306-07, 107 S.Ct. 2378. The Court answered the question in the affirmative: We merely hold that where the government's activities have already worked a taking of all use of property, no subsequent action by the government can relieve it of the duty to provide compensation for the period during which the taking was effective. Id. at 321, 107 S.Ct. 2378. In this context, it appears that the Court used the term temporary taking to refer to the period before a regulatory taking is invalidated by the courts: Appellant asks us to hold that the California Supreme Court erred in Agins v. Tiburon in determining that the Fifth Amendment ... does not require compensation as a remedy for `temporary' regulatory takings those regulatory takings which are ultimately invalidated by the courts.  Id. at 310, 107 S.Ct. 2378 (emphasis added). Accordingly, First English really involved a question of remedies, not a determination that temporary takings, as that term is used here, can constitute deprivations of all economically beneficial use. See Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Reg'l Planning Agency, 216 F.3d 764, 778 (9th Cir.2000) (What is `temporary,' according to the [ First English ] Court's definition, is not the regulation; rather, what is `temporary' is the taking, which is rendered temporary only when an ordinance that effects a taking is struck down by a court.), cert. granted, ___ U.S. ___, 121 S.Ct. 2589, 150 L.Ed.2d 749, 69 U.S.L.W. 3799 (U.S. June 29, 2001); First English Evangelical Lutheran Church v. County of Los Angeles, 210 Cal.App.3d 1353, 258 Cal.Rptr. 893, 897 (1989) (The United States Supreme Court in First English made it abundantly clear that the Court was deciding the remedies issue and only that issue.); Dwight H. Merriam, What is the Relevant Parcel in Takings Litigation?, SC43 ALI-ABA 505, 526 (1998) (In First English the Supreme Court held that once a court concludes that a regulation goes too far and effects a taking, money damages are a constitutionally-required remedy.). [15] Nevertheless, while we agree the Court's discussion of temporary takings in First English referred to retrospectively temporary takings, absolutely precluding prospectively temporary regulations from treatment under Lucas elevates form over substance and defies economic realities. See City of Seattle v. McCoy, 101 Wash. App. 815, 4 P.3d 159 (2000) (holding city's closure of a restaurant for one year under drug nuisance statute a total taking, concluding that the closure denied the property owners of all economically viable use under Lucas ); State ex rel. Pizza v. Rezcallah, 84 Ohio St.3d 116, 124, 702 N.E.2d 81 (1998) (holding the same as to one-year closures of property pursuant to nuisance abatement statutes, noting that [t]he fact that the order is of limited duration does not change this conclusion). To allow such a fine distinction to guide the takings inquiry would ignore the drastic economic impacts inflicted by such regulations, rendering the protections offered by the categorical rule meaningless. Cf. Lucas, 505 U.S. at 1025 n. 12, 112 S.Ct. 2886 (criticizing the vagaries of the harmprevention logic which previously dominated the Court's takings inquiry as allowing the government to escape the requirement of compensation where the legislature had artfully crafted the subject regulation). [16] In sum, we are unable to discern any meaningful distinction justifying the preclusion of prospectively temporary regulations from categorical treatment under Lucas. Moreover, we believe this to be the only logical outgrowth of First English. See Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Reg'l Planning Agency, 34 F.Supp.2d 1226, 1250 (D.Nev.1999) (Since the [ First English ] Court ... [found] that `retrospectively' temporary regulatory takings should be compensated, it is hard to see that it would reach a different conclusion when faced with a `prospectively' temporary regulatory taking.), aff'd in part, reversed in part, 216 F.3d 764 (9th Cir. 2000). [17] Moreover, the courts refusing to extend First English beyond its remedial genesis to prospectively temporary regulations have done so in the land use and planning arena, where an entirely different set of considerations are implicated from those in the context of nuisance abatement where a landowner is being deprived of a property's dedicated use. The concerns specific to the regulation of land use and planning were noted by the Ninth Circuit in declining to apply Lucas 's categorical takings analysis to the temporary takings claims of landowners in the Lake Tahoe region with regard to a temporary moratorium on development instituted in an effort to stem the environmental degradation of Lake Tahoe: [T]he widespread invalidation of temporary planning moratoria would deprive state and local governments of an important land-use planning tool with a well-established tradition. Land-use planning is necessarily a complex, timeconsuming undertaking for a community, especially in a situation as unique as this. In several ways, temporary development moratoria promote effective planning. First, by preserving the status quo during the planning process, temporary moratoria ensure that a community's problems are not exacerbated during the time it takes to formulate a regulatory scheme. Relatedly, temporary development moratoria prevent developers and landowners from racing to carry out development that is destructive of the community's interests before a new plan goes into effect. Such a race-to-development would permit property owners to evade the landuse plan and undermine its goals. Finally, the breathing room provided by temporary moratoria helps ensure that the planning process is responsive to the property owners and citizens who will be affected by the resulting landuse regulations. Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, 216 F.3d at 777 (citations and footnote omitted).