Court Opinion

ID: 9785858
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 22:44:30.800032+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:35.595597
License: Public Domain

Justice EISMANN,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in Parts II, and V of the majority opinion.
With respect to Parts III and IV, I agree that the district court misunderstood the applicable law in its analysis of the takings claims, and its grant of summary judgment must be vacated. I write because the majority creates new law to permit the government to take private property without paying compensation.
A. Are the Takings Claims Time Barred?
I agree that under Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U.S. 606, 121 S.Ct. 2448, 150 L.Ed.2d 592 (2001), the takings claims are not time barred. The district court’s holding to the contrary must be reversed.
*855B. Is the Takings Claim Ripe for Review?
1. A regulatory takings claim is not ripe for review if the property owner has not utilized available procedures to obtain a variance from the regulations. The Shoreline Regulations adopted by Ordinance No. 1722 are currently codified as Sections 17.08.200 through 17.08.255 of the Coeur d’Alene Municipal Code.1 Section 17.08.245 provides, “Construction within forty feet (40’) of the shoreline shall be prohibited.”2 It is undisputed that portions of the two fences constructed on the property now owned by the Beach Brothers, Inc., (Beach Brothers) are within that forty-foot area. Under the Shoreline Regulations, the fences could be permitted to remain within forty feet of the shoreline only if a variance were granted. Section 17.08.255 provides, “A variance may be granted from any provision of the shoreline regulations, pursuant to Article VI of Chapter 17.09, and provided that the variance conforms to the stated purpose of the shoreline regulations.”
The United States Supreme Court has held a claim that government regulations have effected a taking of a property interest is not ripe if the property owner failed to utilize available procedures to obtain a variance from the regulations. Williamson Planning Comm’n v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 172, 105 S.Ct. 3108, 87 L.Ed.2d 126 (1985). It is undisputed that no variance was sought in this case to permit construction of the fences at issue. The landowner need not seek a variance, however, if the governmental agency would not have any discretion to grant it. Suitum v. Tahoe Reg'l Planning Agency, 520 U.S. 725, 117 S.Ct. 1659, 137 L.Ed.2d 980 (1997). In this case, the application for a variance would be made to the planning commission, which could grant the variance as long as it “conforms to the stated purpose of the shoreline regulations.” Coeur d’Alene Mun.Code §§ 17.08.255 & 17.09.600 et seq.
2. In order to reach the result that no variance could be granted, the majority holds that two ordinances are, simultaneously, in conflict with each other and not in conflict with each other. In 1928, the City adopted Ordinance No. 676, which banned all buildings or structures located east of 11th Street and south of Lakeshore Drive. The waterfront parcel owned by Beach Brothers is within that area, but the parcel owned by the Simpsons is not.3 In 1982 the City adopted Ordinance No. 1722, which imposed “Shoreline Regulations” over an area that included, but was larger than, the area covered by Ordinance No. 676, as amended. Ordinance No. 1722 also provided, “All ordinances and parts of ordinances in conflict with this ordinance are hereby repealed.”
The majority states, “The plain language of those ordinances grants no discretionary authority to City officials to allow a fence on Sanders Beach, particularly within 40 feet of the shoreline.” The variance provision in the Shoreline Regulations of Ordinance No. 1722 does not limit the area in which a variance can be granted. It states, “A variance may be granted from any provision of the Shoreline Regulations, pursuant to Section 17.09.600, and provided that the variance conforms to the stated purpose of the Shoreline Regulations.” (Emphasis added.) The word “any” means any.
The majority holds that the variance provision in Ordinance No. 1722 does not apply because it is in conflict with Ordinance No. 676, which did not include any provision for a variance. The majority also holds, however, that Ordinance No. 676 was not repealed by the adoption of Ordinance No. 1722 because there is no conflict between the two Ordinances. How the two Ordinances can be in conflict with each other and not in conflict *856with each other at the same time escapes me. There are other conflicts between the two Ordinances in addition to the conflicting provisions regarding the availability of a variance.
First, Ordinance No. 676 prohibits the erection of all structures south of Lakeshore Drive within the covered area. Ordinance No. 1722 does not prohibit the erection of all structures south of Lakeshore Drive. It only prohibits construction within forty feet of the shoreline. The district court found that a portion of the Beach Brothers’s property is located south of Lakeshore Drive but outside the 40 foot setback.
Second, Ordinance No. 676 does not provide any exception for replacing or maintaining public facilities or structures. Ordinance No. 1722 does provide an exception for replacing or maintaining essential public services (such as streets, sidewalks, parking lots, street lights, fire hydrants and underground facilities).
Third, Ordinance No. 676 prohibits maintenance of any structure south of Lakeshore Drive within the covered area. Ordinance No. 1722 does not prohibit replacement or maintenance of certain existing private structures (shoreline protective structures, fences, hedges and walls in their present location).
Fourth, Ordinance No. 676 does not provide for any exceptions to its prohibitions. Ordinance No. 1722 provides that, in addition to the above exceptions, the prohibition on construction within forty feet of the shoreline does not apply in a C-34 Zoning District.
Additionally, in 1993 the City codified its ordinances in the Coeur d’Alene Municipal Code. That Municipal Code includes all regulatory and penal ordinances. Section 1.01.030 provides, “This Code consists of all the regulatory and penal ordinances and certain of the administrative ordinances of the City of Coeur d’Alene, codified pursuant to the provisions of Sections 50-903 through 50-906 of the Idaho Code Annotated.” Ordinance No. 676 was a regulatory ordinance. It regulated the erection and maintenance of any structures within the area designated in the Ordinance. Ordinance No. 676 is a penal ordinance. It provided a fine of up to $100 upon any conviction for violating the Ordinance. Ordinance No. 676 was not included in the codification.
3. The majority usurps the authority of the City to determine what variances are permitted. Finally, the majority holds that the erection of any fences to protect private property from trespassers would, as a matter of law, not conform to the stated purpose of the Shoreline Regulations. It states, “[I]t appears to be fairly obvious that the fence is violative of both the purpose of, and prohibitions contained in, the Shoreline Regulations.” The issue is not whether the erection of these particular chain link fences would fail to conform to the stated purpose of the regulations. If it granted a variance, the planning commission could include reasonable conditions regarding the type of fencing permitted. Rather, the holding would have to be that no structure designed to keep out trespassers would conform to that purpose. The stated purpose of the regulations is “to protect, preserve and enhance visual resources and public access of the Coeur d’Alene shoreline.” Coeur d’Alene Mun.Code §§ 17.08.255. The fences at issue were erected to keep people from trespassing on private property. To hold that fencing erected for that purpose cannot, under any circumstances, conform to the purpose of the Shoreline Regulations, the purpose of those Regulations would have to be to require landowners to submit to the physical occupation of their land. Although that may have been an unstated purpose for enacting the Shoreline Regulations, it is not their stated purpose. Any such purpose would invite close scrutiny under the Takings Clause. As the United States Supreme Court stated in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1019 n. 8, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 2895, 120 L.Ed.2d 798, 815 (1992),
Though our prior takings cases evince an abiding concern for the productive use of, and economic investment in, land, there are plainly a number of noneconomic interests in land whose impairment will invite exceedingly close scrutiny under the Takings Clause. See, e.g., Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 *857U.S. 419, 436, [102 S.Ct. 3164, 3176-77, 73 L.Ed.2d 868, 882-83] (1982) (interest in excluding strangers from one’s land).
In my opinion, since a variance procedure exists, Beach Brothers should be required to request a variance and the City should be given an opportunity to consider the request and possibly avoid the need for this litigation.
The fact that the City has brought this lawsuit does not mean that the planning commission would not grant any variance, or that the city council would overturn any variance granted. The City has the right to require compliance with the procedures set forth in the Shoreline Regulations, including the requirement that a landowner desiring to erect structures in violation of the Regulations must first seek a variance. The City may also have erroneously assumed, as it argued, that any takings claim arose in 1928 when it adopted Ordinance No. 676 and that any takings claim was therefore barred by the statute of limitations.
C. The Majority Erroneously Allows the Government to Take a Purchaser’s Real Property if the Seller Had an Improper Motive in Selling the Property.
Assuming that no variance would be granted to erect any structures on the Beach Brothers’s property, then there is an issue of whether the property has been taken under Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1019, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 2895, 120 L.Ed.2d 798, 815 (1992). Lucas and others had developed a subdivision on a barrier island off the coast of South Carolina, and Lucas had purchased for himself two of the lots located about 300 feet from the beach. He intended to erect a single-family residence on each lot, but a subsequently enacted statute prohibited “the construction of any permanent structure (including a dwelling), save a small deck or walkway,” Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 304 S.C. 376, 404 S.E.2d 895, 896 (1991). The United States Supreme Court held that the statute prohibiting construction on the lots constituted a taking because it deprived Lucas of “all economically beneficial uses in the name of the common good, that is, to leave his property economically idle,” Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1019, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 2895, 120 L.Ed.2d 798, 815 (1992).
The Takings Clause is not limited to protecting only economic development of real property. It also protects noneconomic uses, such as excluding strangers from one’s own land. As the Supreme Court explained in Lucas:
Justice STEVENS similarly misinterprets our focus on “developmental” uses of property (the uses proscribed by the Beachfront Management Act) as betraying an “assumption that the only use of property cognizable under the Constitution are developmental uses.” We make no such assumption. Though our prior takings cases evince an abiding concern for the productive use of, and economic investment in, land, there are plainly a number of noneconomic interests in land whose impairment will invite exceedingly close scrutiny under the Takings Clause. See, e.g., Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 436, [102 S.Ct. 3164, 3176, 73 L.Ed.2d 868, 882-83] (1982) (interest in excluding strangers from one’s land).
Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1019 n. 8, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 2895, 120 L.Ed.2d 798, 815 (1992) (Emphasis in original, internal citation omitted). Likewise, in Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374, 393, 114 S.Ct. 2309, 2320, 129 L.Ed.2d 304, 321 (1994), the Supreme Court stated, “As we have noted, this right to exclude others is ‘one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property.’ ” The Beach Brothers’s desire to exclude others from its real property is also entitled to protection under the Takings Clause.
The district court erroneously equated beneficial use with market value. It held that because the record indicated the Beach Brothers’s property retained some market value (someone would pay money to acquire it), the City’s regulations had not deprived the Beach Brothers of all economically beneficial use of the property. Except for unusual circumstances such as contamination by *858toxic waste, all real property has a market value. It is hard to imagine any parcel of unpolluted real property that someone would not pay $1.00 to acquire. The issue is whether the government has deprived the landowner of all economically beneficial uses of his property, not whether the landowner could still sell the property to someone else. Because a Lucas claim requires a showing that the government regulation has deprived the landowner of all economically beneficial uses of his property, the first issue is often to identify the relevant property.
1. The majority creates new law to circumvent the Takings Clause. There are two parcels of property involved in this case. One is the Simpsons’ residence, located north of Lakeshore Drive. The other is the Beach Brothers’s lakefront property located south of Lakeshore Drive. The district court held that the two properties should be considered as one when analyzing whether the Shoreline Regulations constituted a taking of the Beach Brothers’s property. I agree that the district court clearly erred in its analysis.
The majority holds that even if Beach Brothers is the bona fide owner of the lakefront parcel, the trial court could still aggregate the Beach Brothers’s property with the Simpsons’ property in its takings analysis if the district court found that the sale was “primarily designed to influence the denominator analysis.” The purpose of that aggregation is to defeat the Beach Brothers’s taking claim and to enable the City to ban all development of the Beach Brothers’s property. Thus, the majority holds that if a seller had an improper motive for selling real property, the government can take that property from the purchaser without being required to pay compensation. Not surprisingly, the majority cannot cite any authority supporting that proposition.
Although it cites Ciampitti v. United States, 22 Cl.Ct. 310 (1991), that case did not address the issue, nor is it even binding authority, unless you happen to be litigating in the court of claims. As noted by the Michigan Supreme Court, “Although state courts are bound by the decisions of the United States Supreme Court construing federal law, there is no similar obligation with respect to decisions of the lower federal courts.” Abela v. General Motors Corp., 469 Mich. 603, 677 N.W.2d 325, 327 (Mich.2004).
The United States Supreme Court has never held that a takings claim asserted by the buyer of real property can be defeated if the seller of the property had an improper motive for parting with the property. The Supreme Court has addressed, however, a similar issue.
In Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U.S. 606, 121 S.Ct. 2448, 150 L.Ed.2d 592 (2001), the Supreme Court addressed whether a regulatory takings claim could be denied on the basis that the landowner knew of the government regulations before purchasing the property at issue. In holding that it could not, the Supreme Court stated,
Were we to accept the State’s rule, the postenactment transfer of title would absolve the State of its obligation to defend any action restricting land use, no matter how extreme or unreasonable. A State would be allowed, in effect, to put an expiration date on the Takings Clause. This ought not to be the rule. Future generations, too, have a right to challenge unreasonable limitations on the use and value of land.
Id. at 627, 121 S.Ct. at 2462-63, 150 L.Ed.2d at 613. “A blanket rule that purchasers with notice have no compensation right when a claim becomes ripe is too blunt an instrument to accord with the duty to compensate for what is taken.” Id. at 628, 121 S.Ct. at 2463, 150 L.Ed.2d at 613-14. The Court also said, “The State’s rule would work a critical alteration to the nature of property, as the newly regulated landowner is stripped of the ability to transfer the interest which was possessed prior to the regulation. The State may not by this means secure a windfall for itself.” Id. at 627, 121 S.Ct. at 2463, 150 L.Ed.2d at 613.
In Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825, 107 S.Ct. 3141, 97 L.Ed.2d 677 (1987), the Nollans had an option to purchase beachfront property that was conditioned upon their promise to demolish and replace the existing bungalow on the property. They applied for a permit from *859the California Coastal Commission to demolish the bungalow and replace it with a three-bedroom house. The Commission granted the permit subject to the Nollans recording a deed giving the public an easement across a portion of the beachfront property. While the issue of whether the Commission could condition the permit upon the granting of the easement was being appealed, the Nollans purchased the property. Thus, they purchased their property with full knowledge that the Commission would require them to grant an easement to the public as a condition of demolishing and replacing the bungalow. The United States Supreme Court held that if California “wants an easement across the Nollans’ property, it must pay for it.” 483 U.S. at 842, 107 S.Ct. at 3151, 97 L.Ed.2d at 692. The dissenters would have denied the Nollans any recovery on the ground that before they purchased the property they had full knowledge that the building permit would be conditioned upon their granting the easement. The Nollan majority rejected that argument. Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U.S. 606, 629, 121 S.Ct. 2448, 2463-64, 150 L.Ed.2d 592, 614-15 (2001).
Thus, the Beach Brothers’s takings claim could not be denied on the ground that it knew of the City’s ordinances and the pending litigation prior to purchasing the waterfront parcel of property. The majority holds, however, that the Beach Brothers’s takings claim could be denied if the Simpsons sold the parcel with the wrong motive. The supposedly improper motive of wanting to enhance a takings claim by selling a parcel of real property is no different than buying real property with notice of existing land-use restrictions and then bringing a takings claim based upon those restrictions.
The majority cannot cite a single case in which a purchaser’s property was pretended to be still owned by the seller in order to evaluate the purchaser’s regulatory takings claim. When government regulations prohibit development on a portion of an owner’s property, the owner often argues that the court should pretend that the regulated portion has been separated from the remainder and consider it separately. This argument is called “conceptual severance.” See, Tahoe-Sierra Pres. Council, Inc., v. Tahoe Reg’l Planning Agency, 535 U.S. 302, 331, 122 S.Ct. 1465, 1483-84, 152 L.Ed.2d 517, 546 (2002). The majority has created a new doctrine that would be “conceptual aggregation”—pretending that two separately owned parcels of property are in common ownership when analyzing a regulatory takings claim as to one of the parcels.
Another problem with the majority’s newly-created conceptual aggregation rule is that motive is difficult to determine. A trial court could easily infer the allegedly improper motive in order to circumvent the protection of the Takings Clause. Thus, I agree that the district court erred by considering both parcels as one when analyzing the takings claim. I disagree that the majority’s newly created doctrine of conceptual aggregation is consistent with the decisions of the United States Supreme Court.
2. The majority has an aversion to opinions of the United States Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court has not thoroughly addressed the issue of what property should be considered as the proper denominator in the takings fraction. As it stated in Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U.S. 606, 631, 121 S.Ct. 2448, 2464-65, 150 L.Ed.2d 592, 616 (2001) (internal citations omitted), “Some of our cases indicate that the extent of deprivation effected by a regulatory action is measured against the value of the parcel as a whole, but we have at times expressed discomfort with the logic of this rule, a sentiment echoed by some commentators.” The Supreme Court has never held, however, that two separately owned parcels can be aggregated when determining the proper denominator. Language in two of its opinions indicates that they cannot.
In Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Reg’l Planning Agency, 535 U.S. 302, 331-32, 122 S.Ct. 1465, 1483-84, 152 L.Ed.2d 517, 546 (2002), the Supreme Court stated, “An interest in property is defined by the metes and bounds that describe its geographic dimensions and the term of years that describes the temporal aspect of the owner’s interest.” The Simpsons’ property is not included within the metes and bounds description of the Beach Brothers’s property. *860Interestingly, the majority quotes from the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Tahoe-Sierra, but does not address the later opinion of the United States Supreme Court.
The Penn Central case also provides some guidance as to whether different properties can be aggregated to defeat a takings claim. The Penn Central Transportation Company (Penn Central) owned Grand Central Terminal (Terminal), which had been designated as a landmark under New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Law. That Law required approval from the Landmark Preservation Commission (Commission) before altering the landmark’s exterior architectural features or constructing any exterior improvement on the landmark. After being denied approval to construct an office building exceeding fifty stories in height above the Terminal, Penn Central sued. It alleged that that the restrictions upon its development plans constituted a taking of its property— specifically the airspace above the Terminal. The Supreme Court rejected that argument, in part because the Commission had not indicated it would prohibit any construction above the Terminal and Penn Central had not sought approval to construct a smaller structure.
One of the issues in Penn Central was identifying the property at issue. “The Terminal is located in midtown Manhattan. Its south fagade faces 42d Street and that street’s intersection with Park Avenue. At street level, the Terminal is bounded on the west by Vanderbilt Avenue, on the east by the Commodore Hotel, and on the north by the Pan-American Building.” Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 115, 98 S.Ct. 2646, 2654-55, 57 L.Ed.2d 631, 642-43 (1978). Penn Central owned the Pan-American Building and the Commodore Hotel, and it also owned the Barclay, Biltmore, Roosevelt and Waldorf-Astoria Hotels in the vicinity of the Terminal, and other braidings. Id. When identifying the parcel at issue, the Supreme Court stated, “In deciding whether a particular governmental action has effected a taking, this Court focuses rather both on the character of the action and on the nature and extent of the interference with rights in the parcel as a whole—here, the city tax block designated as the ‘landmark site.’ ” Id. at 130-31, 98 S.Ct. at 2662-63, 57 L.Ed.2d at 652-53. (Emphasis added). Even though Penn Central owned other properties adjoining the Terminal, only the Terminal was identified by the Supreme Court as the parcel of property at issue when analyzing the takings claim.
In Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1016 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 2894, 120 L.Ed.2d 798, 813 (1992), the United States Supreme Court commented on the issue of identifying the relevant parcel in a situation where only a portion of a larger tract was subject to the challenged government regulations. Athough it noted that the issue had not yet been resolved, it stated that it would be an extreme and unsupportable view to hold that the diminution in a particular parcel’s value produced by a municipal ordinance should be considered in light of the total value of the takings claimant’s other holdings in the vicinity. The Court stated:
Regrettably, the rhetorical force of our “deprivation of all economically feasible use” rule is greater than its precision, since the rule does not make clear the “property interest” against which the loss of value is to be measured. When, for example, a regulation requires a developer to leave 90% of a rural tract in its natural state, it is unclear whether we would analyze the situation as one in which the owner has been deprived of all economically beneficial use of the burdened portion of the tract, or as one in which the owner has suffered a mere diminution in value of the tract as a whole. (For an extreme—and, we think, unsupportable—-view of the relevant calculus, see Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 42 N.Y.2d 324, 333-334, 397 N.Y.S.2d 914, 920, 366 N.E.2d 1271, 1276-1277 (1977), aff'd, 438 U.S. 104, [98 S.Ct. 2646, 57 L.Ed.2d 631] (19787), where the state court examined the diminution in a particular parcel’s value produced by a municipal ordinance in light of total value of the takings claimant’s other holdings in the vicinity.) Unsurprisingly, this uncertainty regarding the composition of the denominator in our “deprivation” fraction has produced inconsistent pronouncements by the Court.
*861If it was an extreme and unsupportable view to assert that the proper denominator in Penn Central should include both the property regulated and adjoining property owned by the same entity, then it is even beyond extreme and unsupportable to assert that the proper denominator can include nearby property owned by someone else.
To arrive at this result, the majority relies upon a general statement in a 1991 opinion of the Court of Claims and ignores contrary language in more recent opinions of the United States Supreme Court. As I stated previously, opinions of the Court of Claims are not binding authority on this Court, but opinions of the United States Supreme Court are. I believe we must follow them. Therefore, I cannot agree to the “conceptual aggregation” doctrine created by the majority in this case.
Justice TROUT concurs.

. Section 17.08.205 states that the Shoreline Regulations consist of Sections 17.08.200 through 17.08.299, but at present the section numbers end at 17.08.255.

. The ordinance also provides that there can be construction within forty feet of the shoreline "as provided for in Section 17.08.250,” but that code section would not permit erection of the fences at issue in this case.

.The area covered by Ordinance No. 676 was later amended by Ordinance No. 1197 adopted in 1965, but that amendment does not affect the two parcels at issue in this case.