Opinion ID: 835006
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Did Plaintiff Allege Facts Constituting a Taking Under the Oregon Constitution?

Text: We turn to whether, under the circumstances alleged in plaintiff's first claim for relief, Oregon law recognizes an inverse condemnation action premised on a taking under the Oregon Constitution. In interpreting original provisions of the Oregon Constitution, we apply a now-familiar methodology first articulated in Priest v. Pearce, 314 Or. 411, 415-16, 840 P.2d 65 (1992). This court recently summarized that methodology in the context of interpreting Article I, section 18: [W]e consider the text of Article I, section 18, its history, and the cases interpreting it. Our goal in undertaking that inquiry is to identify the historical principles embodied in the constitutional text and to apply those principles faithfully to modern circumstances. Coast Range Conifers v. Board of Forestry, 339 Or. 136, 142, 117 P.3d 990 (2005) (citations omitted). In Coast Range Conifers, this court analyzed Article I, section 18, to address a different issue  whether that clause addressed only physical takings of property, or whether it also extended to regulatory takings. Although the issue was different from that presented in this case, much of the analysis is useful to our analysis here. As originally adopted, Article I, section 18, provided: Private property shall not be taken for public use, nor the particular services of any man be demanded, without just compensation; nor except in case of the state, without such compensation first assessed and tendered. [19] Coast Range Conifers elucidated that text as follows: Because Article I, section 18, was part of the original Oregon Constitution, we look to the meaning of the words that the framers used. See Bobo v. Kulongoski, 338 Or. 111, 120, 107 P.3d 18 (2005) (looking to dictionary relevant to time constitutional provision adopted). In 1857, the word `take' meant `[i]n a general sense, to get hold or gain possession of a thing in almost any manner.' Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) (emphasis in original). That definition implies that governmental acts that result in the appropriation of private property for public use will constitute a taking  a conclusion that is consistent with the corollary prohibition in Article I, section 18, against demanding or appropriating the uncompensated services of any person. Webster defined `property' in 1828 both concretely (as `[a]n estate, whether in lands, goods or money') and more abstractly (as `[t]he exclusive right of possessing, enjoying and disposing of a thing'). Id. Put differently, the dictionary definition of property in 1828 was broad enough to include both the tangible or physical thing and the legal interests pertaining to it. 339 Or. at 142-43, 117 P.3d 990 (footnote omitted). After exploring the historical circumstances of the enactment and interpretation of Article I, section 18, the court in Coast Range Conifers recognized that a classic taking occurs when the government physically occupies or appropriates property, but that physically invasive intentional government action also may rise to the level of a taking. Id. at 145, 117 P.3d 990; see also Morrison v. Clackamas County, 141 Or. 564, 569, 18 P.2d 814 (1933) (government takes property when it intentionally floods private property for public use). The court also acknowledged that Article I, section 18, is not limited to those circumstances, citing the following cases as examples of other governmental acts that effect takings under Article I, section 18: Boise Cascade Corp. v. Board of Forestry, 325 Or. 185, 198, 935 P.2d 411 (1997) (regulations constitute taking if they deny owner any economically viable use of real property); Dodd v. Hood River County, 317 Or. 172, 182, 855 P.2d 608 (1993) (regulatory taking occurs if real property does not retain some substantial beneficial use); Thornburg v. Port of Portland, 233 Or. 178, 192, 376 P.2d 100 (1962) (government-authorized overflights constitute taking when they deny owner use and enjoyment of property); McQuaid v. Portland & V. R'y Co., 18 Or. 237, 22 P. 899 (1889) (government act of placing railway in a public street and thereby denying owner access to street constitutes taking); accord Willamette Iron Works v. O.R. & N. Co., 26 Or. 224, 228-29, 37 P. 1016 (1894) (explaining and applying McQuaid ). Coast Range Conifers, 339 Or. at 145, 117 P.3d 990. The court explained that, although the framers may not have anticipated the precise circumstances detailed in those cases, the framers would have been aware that governmental actions that did not fit precisely within the classic paradigm of a taking still could be `equivalent to a taking' and thus entitle the owner to compensation. Id. at 145-46, 117 P.3d 990. Thus, the issue in Coast Range Conifers was whether the governmental action at issue a state wildlife regulation that prevented plaintiff from logging approximately nine acres of a 40-acre parcel that plaintiff alleged substantially interfered with its use of its property  was equivalent to the governmental acts that the court had recognized as takings. The court held that, although [r]egulation in pursuit of public policy could be tantamount to a public appropriation of private property, the regulation at issue did not present that circumstance. The court applied the whole parcel rule and held that the challenged rule did not deprive the plaintiff of all economically viable use of the land and therefore did not effect a taking. Id. at 147, 117 P.3d 990. The question that this case presents is similar  whether this court will recognize a condition of development that requires construction of off-site improvements as the modern equivalent of a physical taking. [20] Plaintiff does not argue that that condition deprives it of all economically viable use of its land or is of comparable severity and thereby is tantamount to a physical taking. Plaintiff contends instead that the city's action constitutes a taking because (1) Article I, section 18, applies to the taking of personal property such as livestock or crops, see Hawkins v. City of La Grande, 315 Or. 57, 67, 843 P.2d 400 (1992); Coos Bay Oyster Coop. v. Highway Com., 219 Or. 588, 596, 348 P.2d 39 (1959); Bowden v. Davis et al, 205 Or. 421, 434-35, 289 P.2d 1100 (1955) (each so applying Article I, section 18); (2) the materials necessary for plaintiff to construct off-site improvements are personal property; and (3) plaintiff was required to transfer those materials to the city. Although we agree that Article I, section 18, extends to the taking of personal, as well as real, property, we disagree that the city effected a taking of plaintiff's personal property in this case. As we explained in our analysis of the federal constitution, the city did not acquire personal property that plaintiff owned; it required that plaintiff construct public improvements that previously did not exist. That was the functional equivalent of requiring that plaintiff make a monetary payment to the city for a specific purpose  the construction of public improvements. At the time that the Oregon Constitution was adopted, there was at least a question about whether the government's imposition of such monetary obligations implicated the power of eminent domain, and arguably a consensus that it did not. In 1851, the New York Court of Appeals considered the constitutionality of special assessments imposed to pay the cost of grading and pavement of roads. People ex rel. Griffin v. City of Brooklyn, 4 N.Y. 419 (1851). The court began by noting that taxation and eminent domain rest substantially on the same foundation: In both circumstances, the government takes property for public use, and in both cases, it provides compensation  in the case of taxation, by the protection and increased value presumed to result from the government services paid for by the tax. Id. at 422-23. Nevertheless, the court explained, the power of taxation was distinct from the power of eminent domain. One of the distinctions that the court made was that [m]oney can always be had by taxation; lands can not [ sic ]', and therefore lands may be taken by right of eminent domain, but money may not. Id. at 424. [21] The California Supreme Court also noted that distinction in Emery v. San Francisco Gas Co., 28 Cal. 345, 350-54 (1865), quoting extensively from People ex rel. Griffin, and concluding that assessments for improvements, upon whatever principle distributed, are not taking private property for public use because special assessments take only money; [t]he property referred to in the Constitution for which special compensation must be made, is something other than money, as where land is taken to be used as a street. In 1867, a legal treatise by the Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court agreed: The principal point of difference [in recent cases] has been to determine where taxation ends, and the tenure of the right of eminent domain begins. Since the decision of the case of [ People ex rel. Griffin ], the courts seem very composedly to have sunk down into the quiet conviction that it is nothing but taxation, and that where the municipal authorities assess the land to its full value for the purpose of assumed improvements, more or less remote from the land, and without regard to the extent of the ratio of equalization, it is still nothing but taxation. Isaac F. Redfield, 2 The Law of Railways 389 (1867) (footnotes omitted). And in 1868, Thomas Cooley also asserted that the right to eminent domain can be exercised over every species of property except money and rights of action. Thomas M. Cooley, A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations 526-27 (1868). In our view, there is not any logical way to apply a takings analysis to the imposition of new monetary obligations. [22] As the Supreme Court helpfully explained in Lingle, a takings analysis assumes that the government has the power to acquire the property taken; it requires only that the government pay just compensation for that property. It does not make sense to say that, although government has the power to impose a monetary obligation, it must repay the value received as just compensation. The real objection that a property owner has to the imposition of a monetary obligation in excess of what is necessary to mitigate the impacts of development is that the government does not have authority to impose such an obligation, or that the obligation offends some statutory or constitutional provision other than Article I, section 18. When government regulates the use of a property, it effects a taking if it deprives the owner of all economically viable use of the land. In that instance, the regulation of the property is tantamount to the acquisition of the property. When, instead, the regulation requires that the owner pay a sum of money or use a sum of money for a particular purpose, the regulation is not tantamount to acquisition of the property, even when the obligation exceeds the impact of the development, unless, of course, the obligation is so high that it imposes a burden tantamount to acquisition. Absent additional allegations, a property owner that alleges that a local government has conditioned development on construction of off-site improvements at a cost that is not roughly proportional to the impacts of the development, does not allege a taking under Article I, section 18, of the Oregon Constitution. Plaintiff in this case did not allege such additional facts, [23] and, consequently, plaintiff's claim for inverse condemnation under the state constitution was not cognizable in state court. We answer the Ninth Circuit's second question, as we have rephrased it, as follows: No, a property owner that alleges that a city has required it to construct off-site improvements at a cost that is not roughly proportional to the impact of the development, as opposed to dedicating an interest in real property such as granting an easement, does not allege a taking that gives rise to a claim for just compensation.