Court Opinion

ID: 9787434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:16:34.29827+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:55.966001
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
concurring in the judgment only.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the Colorado Department of Transportation has the authority to condemn the property at issue here, and I therefore concur in its judgment reversing the court of appeals. Because I believe, however, that the General Assembly has expressly granted the Department the requisite authority, I do not join its discussion or conclusion concerning necessary implication. Whether or not the authority to condemn property for the proposed parking and transit facility would have necessarily been implied in a grant of authority to condemn private property for a state highway alone, it is clear to me that it is included within the broader “state highway purposes,” for which authority was actually granted, and that it would serve a “public use,” as required by the state constitution.
The breadth of the Department’s authority is entirely a matter of construction. Except in specified circumstances not at issue here, private property may not be condemned pursuant to statutory authority unless the purpose for which the condemnation is sought is judicially determined to be a public use within the meaning of Colo. Const., Art. II, Sec 15. Buck v. District Court, 199 Colo. 344, 346, 608 P.2d 350, 351 (1980). Even for such public uses, however, private property may not be condemned in the absence of authorization from the General Assembly that is either express or necessarily implied. Id., 199 Colo. at 348, 608 P.2d at 352. Whether the condemnation of particular private property is authorized is therefore ultimately a matter of constitutional and statutory interpretation, or more precisely, a matter of statutory interpretation in light of constitutional limitations.
Although we have often repeated that statutory authorization to condemn private property must be construed narrowly, the legislature’s power to authorize condemnation, as it sees fit, is limited only by the constitutional prescription that condemnation must be for a public use. The scope of any particular statutory authorization to condemn is therefore construed, just as any other statute, according to long-accepted principles of statutory construction. Rather than altering the applicable principles, or short-circuiting the pro*946cess of statutory interpretation altogether, the requirement for a narrow construction merely guides the application of these rules and directs that any remaining ambiguity in legislative intent be resolved against, rather than in favor of, authorization. Cf. People v. Thoro Products Co., 70 P.3d 1188, 1198 (Colo.2003) (“[I]f after utilizing the various aids of statutory construction, the General Assembly’s intent remains obscured, the rule of lenity should be applied to resolve the ambiguity.”).
By its own terms, section 43-1-208(3), 11 C.R.S. (2003), grants the Department broad condemnation authority. Had the General Assembly granted the Department authority to condemn property for state highways alone, it may have become necessary to consider whether condemnation of more than the highway’s right-of-way were necessarily implied. Because the. legislature has expressly granted the Department the authority to condemn private. property for “state highway purposes,” however, it is only necessary to construe the,statutory language and determine the scope of the term “purposes.” Whether the legislature intended by “purposes” merely the construction of the highway or, as the term on its face implies, any purpose connected with the highway, including its effective and efficient operation consistent with other public goals, is clearly a question of statutory interpretation. It would be difficult, however, to see how use of the term “purposes” could have been intended to limit rather than expand condemnation authority otherwise implied in the term “state highway” itself. See, e.g., United States v. Langford, 688 F.2d 1088, 1097 (7th Cir.1982) (“Congress ... saw fit to broaden the scope of the [child pornography] legislation through the use of the term ‘purpose,’ [a] term intended to include each and every aspect of the business enterprise_”); but see Kourlis, J., dissenting at 945-946.
Uncharacteristically, article II, section 15 of the state constitution expressly assigns to the judiciary the task of giving meaning to the term “public use.” Because the legislature is presumed to intend that its statutes be constitutional, section 2-4-201(l)(a), 1 G.R.S. (2003); see Le Manufacture Fran-caise v. District Court, 620 P.2d 1040 (Colo.1980) (legislature did not intend for long-arm statute to be construed to grant jurisdiction in violation of due process clause), we have previously construed broad grants of condemnation authority as implicitly limited by this court’s interpretation of the public use requirement. In the related context of railroad lines, we have therefore held that legislative authority to condemn property “for any lawful purpose connected with the operations of the company” was implicitly limited to those purposes having “a sufficiently direct functional relationship to the operations of the railroad to satisfy the public use requirement,” Buck, 199 Colo. at 347-48, 608 P.2d at 352. Nowhere, however, did we suggest, as the majority now finds, that the legislature’s broad “purpose” language failed to expressly include condemnation authority for the dust levees at issue there or that such authority was “necessarily implied” only to the extent that the dust levees bore “a sufficiently direct functional relationship to the operations of the railroad.” Maj. op. at 942. The relationship between a' purpose requiring condemnation of property outside the actual right-of-way, and the railroad itself, was significant only in determining whether that additional purpose, like the railroad line itself, could be characterized as a public use.
Even if one could imagine some “state highway purpose” that might not constitute a public use, it is at least clear that condemnation of private property to comply with federal regulations governing construction of the highway constitutes condemnation for a public use, just like condemnation of the right-of-way itself. The trial court made factual findings of these purposes, which are adequately supported in the record. I consider it unnecessary to define the outer limits of the term “state highway purposes” or to determine its necessary implications. .Whether or not the purposes at issue here can be categorized as essential to the construction or operation of the highway, the Department clearly seeks them for “state highway purposes.”