Opinion ID: 722544
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Takings under Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council

Text: 19 The landowners argue that the Government's prohibition on the use of the tipple and coal loading facility stripped the 102 acres remaining in their possession of all economically reasonable uses. Relying on Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 120 L.Ed.2d 798 (1992), they assert that this prohibition constituted a taking under the Fifth Amendment. 20 Lucas established that economic regulations can result in a taking, even though the Government does not formally condemn property. [W]hen the owner of real property has been called upon to sacrifice all economically beneficial uses in the name of the common good, that is, to leave his property economically idle, he has suffered a taking. Id. at 1019, 112 S.Ct. at 2895 (emphasis in original). But Lucas also noted that when the logically antecedent inquiry into the nature of the owner's estate shows that the proscribed use interests were not part of his title to begin with, id. at 1027, 112 S.Ct. at 2899, regulations proscribing such uses do not result in a taking. 21 The Supreme Court explicitly recognized the navigational servitude as a pre-existing limitation on riparian landowners' estates. See id. at 1028-29, 112 S.Ct. at 2900 (citing the navigational servitude as a case when we assuredly would permit the government to assert a permanent easement that was a pre-existing limitation upon the landowner's title.) (emphasis in original). Because the navigational servitude is a pre-existing limitation on the title of riparian property--indeed the limitation is almost as old as the republic itself, see Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat) 1, 189-193, 6 L.Ed. 23 (1824)--exercise of the servitude cannot constitute a taking, even where it deprives a landowner of all economically reasonable use of his land. United States v. Cherokee Nation of Okla., 480 U.S. 700, 704, 107 S.Ct. 1487, 1489-90, 94 L.Ed.2d 704 (1987) (the damage sustained does not result from taking property from riparian owners within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment but from the lawful exercise of a power to which the interests of riparian owners have always been subject); United States v. Rands, 389 U.S. at 122, 88 S.Ct. at 266 (same). Accordingly, even were the landowners to establish that the Government's prohibition on the use of the tipple and coal loading facility deprived them of all economically reasonable uses of their land (and they have not yet established this fact), there was no taking. From the time the tipple and coal-loading facility commenced operation in 1914, the landowners' right to operate them was subject to the navigational servitude and the possibility that the Government might exercise the servitude to prohibit their use. Exercise of the servitude did nothing more than realize a limitation always inherent in the landowners' title. It was not a taking. 22