Opinion ID: 2974712
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Past Violations

Text: In its December 2000 complaint before the district court, the plaintiffs’ primary allegation was that the City’s dewatering of their wells represented an unconstitutional taking of their property, and that they should be entitled to damages—compensation in the form of $25,000 per individual plaintiff—for this taking. A threshold question in any federal takings action, however, is whether or not the case is ripe for review; for if it is not ripe, then we lack jurisdiction to hear the case. Williamson, 473 U.S. at 194-95. In Williamson, the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional takings claims are not ripe for federal court review until state compensation procedures, assuming they exist and are adequate, have been exhausted: The recognition that a property owner has not suffered a violation of the Just Compensation Clause until the owner has unsuccessfully attempted to obtain just 1 In 2004, the Ohio legislature added a time-limitation provision in actions “[f]or relief on the grounds of a physical or regulatory taking of real property.” Ohio Rev. Code § 2305.09(E). This new limitations period is four years, not two. Thus, any takings actions brought after 2004 should follow the four-year time bar, and this could be relevant to any continuing violations actions plaintiffs may wish to bring in the future, as discussed in Part II-B of this opinion. However, as to the original action brought by the plaintiffs and dismissed by the state and district courts on statute of limitations grounds, the two-year limit properly applies. No. 02-3965 McNamara, et al. v. City of Rittman Page 4 compensation through the procedures provided by the State for obtaining such compensation is analogous to the Court’s holding in Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981). There, the Court ruled that a person deprived of property through a random and unauthorized act by a state employee does not state a claim under the Due Process Clause merely by alleging the deprivation of property. In such a situation, the Constitution does not require predeprivation process because it would be impossible or impracticable to provide a meaningful hearing before the deprivation. Instead, the Constitution is satisfied by the provision of meaningful postdeprivation process. Thus, the State’s action is not “complete” in the sense of causing a constitutional injury “unless or until the State fails to provide an adequate postdeprivation remedy for the property loss.” Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 532, n. 12, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 3203, n. 12, 82 L.Ed.2d 393 (1984). Likewise, because the Constitution does not require pretaking compensation, and is instead satisfied by a reasonable and adequate provision for obtaining compensation after the taking, the State’s action here is not “complete” until the State fails to provide adequate compensation for the taking. Id. at 195. The critical inquiry after Williamson, therefore, is whether or not the state compensation procedures are “reasonable, certain, and adequate.” Id. at 194. This inquiry is necessarily timespecific, because a state may have inadequate compensation procedures at one point in time, but these may at a later date be rectified by statute (via the state legislature) or through evolution of the common law (via state courts). See Arnett v. Myers, 281 F.3d 552, 563 (6th Cir. 2002) (stating that “Williamson specifically instructs that the relevant time frame for determining the adequacy of state provisions for obtaining just compensation for an alleged taking is ‘at the time of the taking’”). This is exactly what happened in the 1990s in Ohio. Ohio currently has a “reasonable, certain, and adequate procedure” available to takings claimants in state courts: Ohio does not have an inverse condemnation or other direct, statutory cause of action for plaintiffs seeking just compensation for a taking. Rather, Ohio law provides a statutory mechanism by which the government actor seeking to take property is under a duty to bring an appropriation proceeding against the landowner. See Ohio Rev. Code §§ 163.01-163.62; Shemo v. City of Mayfield Heights, 95 Ohio St. 3d 59, 765 N.E.2d 345, 350 (2002). A property owner who believes that his property has been taken in the absence of such an appropriation proceeding may initiate a mandamus action in Ohio court to force the government actor into the correct appropriation proceeding. . . . Over the last ten years Ohio courts, including the Ohio Supreme Court, have consistently recognized mandamus as the vehicle with which to contest an involuntary taking, no matter whether that taking is a regulatory or a physical one, and no matter whether the public actor is a state or local entity. Coles v. Granville, 448 F.3d 853, 861, 865 (6th Cir. 2006). However, it was not until 1994 that the availability of such a mandamus action was made explicit by the Supreme Court of Ohio. See Levin v. City of Sheffield Lake, 637 N.E.2d 319, 323-34 (Ohio 1994); see also Coles, 448 F.3d at 864 (noting that in Ohio, the Levin decision was the “genesis of the modern recognition of the mandamus action to force appropriation proceedings”). Thus, prior to the Levin decision, Ohio’s compensation procedures in takings cases were decidedly not adequate. Williamson therefore had little impact on takings claims brought in Ohio prior to Levin, as such claims were immediately ripe for federal review. No. 02-3965 McNamara, et al. v. City of Rittman Page 5 The plaintiffs in the instant case filed their original state-court complaint on January 4, 1994, roughly six months prior to the issuance of Levin. The date on which the plaintiffs filed their statecourt complaint is, logically, the latest time at which they could have first known of their injury. Because there was no “reasonable, certain, and adequate procedure” available to takings claimants in Ohio state courts prior to the Levin decision, and because the alleged deprivation here occurred prior to Levin, the plaintiffs’ claim was ripe for federal review already in 1994. And because it was ripe for review in 1994, it was consequently time-barred when the plaintiffs filed in federal court in 2000, well past the then two-year statute of limitations for § 1983 takings actions. The plaintiffs’ procedural due process claims pertaining to past violations by the City are similarly time-barred. “Procedural due process and equal protection claims that are ancillary to taking claims are subject to the same Williamson ripeness requirements . . . .” Arnett, 281 F.3d at 562; see also Bigelow v. Michigan Dep’t of Natural Res., 970 F.2d 154, 159-60 (6th Cir. 1992). This requires the plaintiffs to show that they had pursued an adequate state measure for obtaining just compensation before their due process claim would be ripe. Because no adequate measure existed at the time, however, the due process claim was ripe concurrent with the takings claim, and as such it too is barred.2