Opinion ID: 2634529
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: under the circumstances of this case, landowners were entitled to recover unreimbursed moving and related expenses in the condemnation proceeding

Text: ¶ 12 The Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Act of 1970 (the FURA) [9] was enacted by the United States Congress to standardize benefits available to persons and businesses physically displaced and economically harmed due to the acquisition of real property for use in federal and federally assisted projects. [10] Its major purpose is to assure that one who is displaced by a federally assisted program does not suffer a loss if that loss can be reasonably compensated by a money payment. [11] It not only guarantees a displaced person the fair market value of his or her property, but also authorizes additional payments and services designed to reduce or eliminate the unfair burden displacement visits on citizens who must relocate for the public good. [12] State agencies must comply with the FURA's payment and assistance provisions as a condition for receiving federal funding of programs and projects that cause displacement. [13] ¶ 13 Congress has directed the head of the Department of Transportation, in cooperation with the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the heads of other federal agencies responsible for funding relocation and acquisition actions, and State and local governments to promulgate regulations for the implementation and administration of the FURA. [14] The regulations provide a procedure for making a claim for relocation payments [15] and an administrative review procedure for appealing an adverse decision on a claim. [16] In neither case is there a requirement for a hearing. Judicial review through the federal Administrative Procedure Act is available for all final federal agency actions taken under the FURA with the exception of actions taken pursuant to the provisions of § 4651, which address real property acquisition practices. [17] ¶ 14 Oklahoma in 1971 enacted legislation corresponding to the provisions of the FURA. [18] Amended in 1988, [19] the Oklahoma Relocation Assistance Act (the ORAA) [20] provides a state-law basis for the payment of relocation benefits, the delivery of relocation assistance, and the implementation of procedures and practices necessary to satisfy the requirements of the FURA. [21] ODOT has published a regulation stating that its policies and procedures for providing relocation payments and advisory assistance shall conform to federal and state laws and regulations. [22] The terms of § 1099 of the ORAA provide for judicial review by any person or business concern aggrieved by final administrative determination, as provided by the Administrative Procedures Act [citation omitted], concerning eligibility for relocation payments authorized by this act.... [23] ¶ 15 The payment provisions authorized by the FURA and the ORAA (hereinafter referred to together for convenience as the relocation assistance acts) are implicated in this case because the highway-widening project for which landowners' property was condemned was financed in part by federal money. [24] Landowners admit that they received a payment pursuant to the relocation assistance acts, but they contend the amount they received was insufficient to fully reimburse them for all of their moving and related expenses. ODOT argues that if landowners were dissatisfied with the amount of the relocation assistance payment, their remedy was by an administrative appeal followed by judicial review of ODOT's final order after all administrative remedies were exhausted. ODOT accordingly casts landowners' litigation of relocation expenses in the condemnation proceeding as in effect an attempt to obtain judicial review of ODOT's determination of the relocation assistance payment due them without having first exhausted available administrative review remedies. [25] ¶ 16 Where an aggrieved party brings a lawsuit when adequate administrative relief is available, the action is to be viewed as fraught with a fatal remedial impediment that bars judicial relief. [26] Were this an attempt by landowners to obtain judicial review of an administrative order without first exhausting administrative remedies, we would agree that judicial relief stands barred, but we disagree with ODOT's characterization of the landowners' quest for relief in the condemnation proceeding as such an effort. Landowners took no action in the district court that might reasonably be construed as seeking judicial review of an administrative order. Rather, landowners sought reimbursement of their moving and related expenses in the condemnation proceeding completely separate and apart from any rights and remedies they may have had to reimbursement of relocation expenses under the relocation assistance acts. [27] The issue in this case is not whether landowners were required to exhaust administrative remedies before seeking judicial relief, but whether the relocation assistance acts are the exclusive remedy for reimbursement of relocation expenses and, if not, whether receipt of an administratively determined relocation assistance payment precludes the recipient from seeking identical relief in a judicial forum. ODOT argues that whenever the relocation assistance acts are applicable, they provide the exclusive remedy for the recovery of moving and related expenses. [28] ¶ 17 This proceeding raises the first-impression question of how the relocation assistance acts and state condemnation proceedings interrelate. In Tate v. Browning-Ferris, Inc., [29] we recognized that [w]here the common law gives a remedy, and another is provided by statute, the latter is merely cumulative, unless the statute declares it to be exclusive. [30] After reviewing the FURA and decisions implementing it, we have concluded that Congress did not intend for the FURA to displace federal, state, or local laws providing for payments substantially similar to those FURA makes available. Moreover, we find nothing in the FURA to indicate that the administrative scheme it creates was designed to precede resort to the courts. [31] Rather, the FURA provides a supplementary scheme of recovery under which federal funds can be used to reimburse a person displaced from a home, business, or farm by a federal or federally assisted project for that person's moving and related expenses where such expenses are not otherwise fully compensable under state condemnation law. [32] That this is what Congress intended is evident from the provisions of § 4631(b) of the FURA, which acknowledges the primacy of non-FURA reimbursement, where such remuneration is available, by denying payment under the FURA for any expense already covered by other federal law or by state or local law which serves a substantially similar purpose to and has a substantially similar effect as a FURA payment. [33] The federal regulations implementing the FURA recognize that compensation made under traditional eminent-domain principles of state law may precede the filing of a FURA claim and, when read in conjunction with 4631(b) of the FURA, implicitly acknowledge that state law condemnation compensation may include items that would also be compensable under the provisions of the FURA. [34] ¶ 18 In short, the relocation assistance acts are not the exclusive remedy for reimbursement of moving and related expenses in those jurisdictions where such expenses are recoverable in a condemnation proceeding. ODOT argues that costs such as moving expenses are not recoverable in a condemnation proceeding in Oklahoma where the condemning authority takes an entire parcel of property. Landowners argue that Oklahoma law authorizes recovery of moving and related expenses regardless of whether the condemning authority takes all or only a portion of a person's property. We agree with landowners. ¶ 19 Long before the enactment of the FURA, moving and related expenses were recoverable in this jurisdiction in a condemnation proceeding as an element of just compensation. In Blincoe v. Choctaw, Oklahoma & Western R.R., [35] a case decided in 1905 that involved the condemnation of property for use by a railroad, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma Territory held that a condemnee is entitled to compensation for damages to personal property incident and necessarily caused by the exercise of the power of eminent domain in taking land. [36] Explaining its decision, the court reasoned as follows: That the owner `by reason of such railroad' has been put to the expense of removing the stock of lumber then on hand is not disputed; neither can it be denied that the cost of such removal was made necessary by the condemnation of the real estate, and is an injury and damage to the owner to the extent of the cost of such removal. In other words, this ruling [i.e. the trial court's ruling excluding evidence of the cost of moving the lumber] would permit the railroad to take the owner's land and thereby compel him to bear whatever expense may be consequent upon preserving his personal property, and yet be remediless therefor. If this shall he (sic) held to be the law, then the constitutional provision, `nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation,' becomes almost as much a sword as a shield to the private citizen, for the compulsory addition to the cost of the personal property of the citizen is as much a taking as the absorption of the real estate itself. Nor is this conclusion relieved or its result modified to the citizen by the fact that the agency thus arbitrarily adding to the cost of his property cannot carry on the business in which he is engaged. The result to the citizen in this case is the same whether the railroad company are benefited by the expenditure or not. In either event the cost of removing the lumber is dead loss to him, occasioned by this taking of his real estate under this power of eminent domain. [37] (emphasis added) ¶ 20 The first state Supreme Court pronouncement on the compensability of moving expenses was made in Oil Fields & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. Treese Cotton Co, [38] in which this court approved an instruction in another railroad condemnation case that the reasonable cost of moving personalty from condemned property and setting it up in another location was compensable in an eminent domain proceeding. The court in that case stated that the law was already settled that when the necessity exists for the removal of property from lands taken in a condemnation proceeding, the reasonable cost of removal is a proper element of damages to be considered,... [39] ¶ 21 Recently, in City of Oklahoma City v. Hamilton, [40] the Court of Civil Appeals held on the authority of Blincoe and Treese Cotton that the owner of a moving and storage business taken in eminent domain was entitled under the state Constitution to recover the expense of moving stored personal property, regardless of whether the taking was characterized as a total taking or a partial taking. [41] ¶ 22 Article II, § 24 of the Oklahoma Constitution states: Private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use without just compensation. Just compensation shall mean the value of the property taken, and in addition, any injury to any part of the property not taken.... This provision is not by its terms limited to real property nor does it exclude from compensable injury damage to personal property when an entire tract of land is taken. The term `property' as used in our Constitution regarding the taking of private property for public use for which just compensation must be paid includes not only real estate held in fee, but also easements, personal property and every valuable interest which can be enjoyed and recognized as property. [42] We construe the state takings clause in accord with the principle first recognized by our predecessors in Blincoe many years ago: that the compulsory addition to the cost of personal property is as much a taking as the condemnation of real estate. As we said in Driver v. Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, [43] In this jurisdiction by force of constitutional provision (Art. 2, Sec. 23) the owner of private property taken `or damaged' for private use is entitled ... to consequential damages resulting from an indirect taking. [44] ¶ 23 The relocation assistance acts do not add to or subtract from the components of value or damage due a condemnee as just compensation under the state law of eminent domain. [45] This court should never be unmindful that a landowner is entitled to be compensated fully when the latter's property is taken by the government in the exercise of the eminent domain power. The mandate of both the state and federal constitutions strongly supports full indemnification by just compensation. The command requires that the condemnee be placed as fully as possible in the same position as that occupied before the government's taking. [46] ¶ 24 While a condemnee in Oklahoma is at liberty to seek reimbursement of moving and related expenses in a condemnation proceeding or through the ORAA, the question raised in this case is whether receipt of an administrative payment pursuant to the relocation assistance acts precludes a subsequent judicial determination of the same expenses in a condemnation proceeding held under state eminent domain law. As a general rule, the doctrine of preclusion operates to enjoin successive attempts to relitigate the same issue in different forums. [47] A final adjudicative administrative decision may have the same preclusive effect as the judgment of a court provided that the proceeding in which the administrative decision is made meets the standards for preclusive effect applicable to judicial decisions. [48] It is unnecessary to consider whether those standards have been met in this case because the record is devoid of proof that there exists a final adjudicative administrative order determining a claim for benefits sought by landowners. For the doctrine to act as a bar in a subsequent proceeding, there must be a final judgment or order in an earlier proceeding that decides an issue again sought to be raised in the later proceeding. [49] In this case, while the parties agree that the landowners received some money under the relocation assistance acts, [50] how that payment came to be made is unclear. In their answer brief, landowners state that they never submitted a claim under the relocation assistance acts for benefits and that ODOT on its own initiative simply proffered to them the maximum payment they were allowed to receive under the relocation assistance acts. ODOT does not directly dispute this assertion, but instead says merely that one is left to wonder how relocation money came to be provided to landowners in the absence of an administrative proceeding from which, presumably, a final order issued. Why ODOT does not simply say landowners filed a claim and it proceeded administratively suggests to us that there may be something to landowners' assertion that they never initiated the administrative process. Still, we are not in the business of guessing. This court is bound by the record presented on appeal. [51] In an appeal, a document not appearing of record will not be presumed to exist. [52] Rather, we treat the document or instrument as nonexistent. [53] In the final analysis, ODOT introduced no evidence in support of its motion in limine to show that the landowners ever invoked the administrative process so as to preclude them from pursuing their moving and related expenditures in the condemnation proceeding. [54] ¶ 25 In summary, landowners were not required to proceed under the relocation assistance acts for the recovery of their moving and related expenses, such expenses being an element of just compensation in an eminent domain proceeding. Moreover, the record in this case is devoid of evidence that landowners ever invoked the administrative process for determining relocation benefits under the relocation assistance acts. Hence landowners had no administrative remedies to exhaust before seeking their remedy in the condemnation proceeding nor were they precluded from seeking those expenses in that proceeding. Reversal of the judgment is not ODOT's due. [55] ¶ 26 The COCA's erroneous holding that landowners had to exhaust administrative remedies led the intermediate appellate court to remand the cause to determine the amount to which landowners were actually entitled under the FURA's provisions. The COCA then directed the district court to reduce the judgment by the additional amount landowners could have recovered administratively but did not because of their inaction. Landowners did not petition for certiorari. Hough v. Leonard [56] teaches that this court will not review any issue decided adversely to a party by the Court of Civil Appeals unless that issue is retendered for review by certiorari. [57] Landowners did not ask this court for any relief from COCA's opinion. Although by today's pronouncement the court vacates that portion of the COCA's opinion that incorrectly holds exhaustion of administrative remedies dispositive, we leave undisturbed the COCA's disposition by remand and mandated reduction. Relief from the latter, which landowners did not seek, cannot be granted.