Opinion ID: 181572
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Weighing the Penn Central Factors Shows the Guggenheims Suffered a Regulatory Taking.

Text: The majority opinion errs in considering only one element of a three-factor, balancing testinvestment-backed expectations and making that element dispositive. It treats the factors as a requirements checklist, rather than a list of considerations to weigh, one against or with another. Further, it flouts the Supreme Court's holding in Palazzolo that a postenactment transfer of title [does not] absolve the [government] of its obligation to defend the restrictions a regulation imposes on property-owners. Palazzolo, 533 U.S. at 627, 121 S.Ct. 2448. At a minimum, the case should be remanded for trial on the severity of the economic impact on the claimants, the existence of investment-backed expectations, and the character of the governmental action because these are at least mixed questions of fact and law on which reasonable triers of fact could find that there was a taking. The Guggenheims produced evidence from which a finder of fact could find that a taking had occurred: the Guggenheims bought the mobile home park with the reasonable expectation that they could free the land from the Ordinance either through a variance, repeal of the regulation, or through court action. They were forced to rent mobile homes at 20% of the current market rate, and sit by as incumbent mobile home owners captured a transfer premium averaging approximately 90% of the sale price of their mobile homes. On summary judgment, drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party, the district court erred in holding, as a matter of law, that the Ordinance was not a taking. See Ventura Packers, Inc., 305 F.3d at 916.