Opinion ID: 2690898
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Redressability

Text: {¶ 25} Next, we examine whether a property owner has a redressable regulatory-taking claim against a municipality when the affected property is beyond the municipality’s corporate limits. In order to answer this question, we again look to the substantive takings law. {¶ 26} The remedy for an alleged regulatory taking is for the property owner to file a complaint seeking a writ of mandamus to compel the regulating government entity to initiate appropriation proceedings against the property 7 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO allegedly burdened by the regulation. State ex rel. Gilbert v. Cincinnati, 125 Ohio St.3d 385, 2010-Ohio-1473, 928 N.E.2d 706. {¶ 27} The government entity responsible for the zoning in the instant case is a village. Villages are municipalities. Section 1, Article XVIII of the Ohio Constitution (“Municipal corporations are hereby classified into cities and villages”). Municipalities have inherent and statutory authority to appropriate property, but the scope of this authority is limited. “Section 3, Article XVIII of the Ohio Constitution, commonly known as the Home Rule Amendment, gives municipalities the ‘authority to exercise all powers of local self-government and to adopt and enforce within their limits such local police, sanitary and other similar regulations, as are not in conflict with general laws.’ ” Cleveland v. State, 128 Ohio St.3d 135, 2010-Ohio-6318, 942 N.E.2d 370, ¶ 7. A municipality’s home-rule authority includes the power of eminent domain. State ex rel. Bruestle v. Rich (1953), 159 Ohio St. 13, 14, 50 O.O. 6, 110 N.E.2d 778. However, aside from acquiring property to operate a public utility that serves its own residents, a municipality has no authority to exercise its inherent eminentdomain powers beyond its corporate limits. Britt v. Columbus (1974), 38 Ohio St.2d 1, 67 O.O.2d 1, 309 N.E.2d 412, at paragraph one of the syllabus. {¶ 28} The General Assembly has also provided municipalities with statutory authority to use eminent-domain powers to acquire property that lies outside the municipality’s corporate limits “when reasonably necessary,” but only for certain enumerated public purposes. R.C. 719.02 and 719.01. However, none of the enumerated purposes listed in R.C. 719.01 include appropriating property for an alleged regulatory taking. {¶ 29} Thus, a municipality has no authority to initiate appropriation proceedings in response to a property owner’s complaint in mandamus alleging a regulatory-taking claim if the affected property lies outside the municipality’s limits. A municipality’s liability for a regulatory taking is limited to the property 8 January Term, 2012 that it is authorized to regulate, i.e., the property within its limits. Accordingly, a property owner has no redressable regulatory-taking claim against a municipality when the affected property lies outside the municipality’s corporate limits.