Yearly Archives: 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial uncertainty for businesses. As of March 24, 2020, the President has declared an emergency under the Stafford Act and the Minnesota Governor has declared a peacetime emergency. Given the situation, the government may order businesses to close or take goods, equipment and space that may be needed for the government’s response. While the government has the power to take such extraordinary actions, that may not eliminate the Constitutional protections for private property owners. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that, “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.” The Minnesota Constitution similarly provides that, “private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation therefore, first paid or secured.” If the government issues an order that shuts down businesses in order to “flatten the curve,” it is unlikely that such action will provide a successful takings claim against the government. On the other hand, taking private property or acquiring space —such as condemning a motel to use in isolating coronavirus patients as recently happened in the State of Washington or acquiring privately-owned medical equipment needed to respond to the emergency —may present successful claims for just compensation under the U.S. and Minnesota Constitutions. A practical approach is required as we expect courts to recognize that the government must respond promptly to this emergency. While the COVID-19 pandemic presents unique questions, we have experience protecting private property rights during emergency situations. To read article in full […]

Although the eminent domain power is an attribute of the sovereign, there are instances in which a private licensee is delegated the power for the acquisition of easements necessary to establish a lineal corridor. For the purposes of this article, our examination of the jurisprudence associated with the acquisition of lineal corridor rights takes place in the “laboratory” of the federal district courts in Florida. For it is there that a new interstate pipeline project, known as the Sabal Trail Natural Gas Pipeline, resulted in the filing of approximately 263 condemnation cases for a lineal corridor of some 247 miles needed to construct a thirty-six-inch-diameter pipeline capable of transmitting up to one billion cubic feet of natural gas a day. In review of these cases, some of which are yet pending appeals before the Eleventh Circuit, we are able to observe how private property rights are regarded when it is a private company wielding the eminent domain power to acquire easement rights, which make servient the estates of owners to a use of property that purportedly diminishes the value of their remainder property due to fear or stigma. Likewise, because some of these cases actually proceeded to jury trial on the measure of compensation, a rare look is afforded as to exactly how, as gatekeeper, a trial judge must often balance between admitting evidence that furthers the owner’s entitlement to a measure of compensation, which includes loss or severance damages resulting from fear or stigma, but preclude evidence where under […]

Landowners, Lee and Ryan Thomas, who were represented by Andrew Brigham, OCA’s Florida member, recently defeated Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC when the Eleventh Circuit affirmed their two jury verdicts totaling over $1.3 million for easement rights for which the pipeline company earlier argued compensation should only be $39,700. Sabal Trail’s appeal sought to overturn the jury verdicts on the basis that the jurors improperly relied on the testimonies of the landowners because the amount of their verdicts exceeded the testimony of their own appraiser. Sabal Trail further argued that their testimonies should have been excluded by the trial judge because they lacked a sufficiently strong foundation in that neither Lee nor Ryan had prior experience selling or buying properties encumbered with natural gas pipelines from which to quantify an opinion of severance damages. The court ultimately disagreed with these assertions. On appeal, Mr. Brigham was assisted by another OCA Member Mark F. (“Thor”) Hearne. For more information about the case, please click here.

OCA recently filed an Amicus Brief on behalf of  Christus Church in the state of Wisconsin. The brief addresses important issues arising out of a pre-litigation “jurisdictional” offer made to the Church by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation that contained compensation for severance damages to the Church’s remaining property caused by highway proximity, even though the Department’s underlying appraisal found that there were no severance damages. OCA’s Amicus Brief specifically addresses the applicable standard when construing eminent domain statutes; the proper statutory construction of the Wisconsin statutes at issue; the extraordinary power of eminent domain and why special rules are needed to level the playing field between condemnors and condemnees; the importance of properly ascertaining and determining severance damages in a partial taking case in order to reach overall just compensation; and the duty of the condemnor to make proper and supportable pre-litigation offers, particularly when they become the basis of later determinations, such as whether the landowner should be reimbursed attorney fees incurred in defending the eminent domain case. To view a copy of OCA’s Amicus Brief, click here.

Mark Meierhenry, former South Dakota Attorney General and Owners’ Counsel of America member for many years passed away recently. While we knew Mark as a talented lawyer, a fierce defender of private property rights and a great member of our organization, his obituary revealed many other wonderful dimensions to his personality and background. Who knew for instance that he had argued six times before the U.S. Supreme Court? Or that he co-authored a series of children’s books? Or that while the Attorney General of South Dakota, he never sought the death penalty, believing that it had little to do with keeping crime down. Mark, we will miss you and hope that the exceptional life you led will now bring some solace to your family and love ones.

OCA joined the Pacific Legal Foundation recently in filing an Amicus Brief in a case before the Virginia Supreme Court entitled Johnson v. City of Suffolk. This case involves a claim by Virginia oystermen that the City of Suffolk and a Sanitation District knowingly operated a sewage and stormwater system in such a way as to discharge wastewater into the Nansemond River, invading oyster beds being leased by the oystermen from the state for the express purpose of oyster cultivation, thereby damaging and taking the oysters—their private property—without compensation. The oystermen are being represented by the law firm of Waldo & Lyle out of Norfolk, Virginia.  From a lower court decision finding the oystermen’s claims were superseded by the right of localities to pollute freely pursuant to Darling v. City of Newport News, 249 U.S. 540, 543 (1919), the case is now before the Virginia Supreme Court. The issue to be decided is: Can a municipal entity evade liability under Article I, Section 11 of the Virginia Constitution after discharging wastewater from its public sanitation system into the Nansemond River, destroying privately owned oysters on sections of riverbeds leased from the Commonwealth for the express purpose of oyster cultivation?   Stay tuned for the decision. A copy of OCA’s Amicus Brief filed on behalf of the oystermen can be accessed here.  

On May 1, 2020 the N.C. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the just compensation judgement in Chappell v. N.C. Dep’t of Transportation, No. 51PA19-1 (May 1, 2020). Chappell is the follow up to the N.C. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Kirby v. North Carolina Dep’t of Transportation, No 56PA14-2 (June 10, 2016), in which the court held that the “Map Act,” a statute by which NCDOT designated vast swaths of property for future highway acquisition, was a taking because it prohibited development and use of designated properties over an extended period of time. In Kirby, the court concluded “[t]hese restraints, coupled with their indefinite nature, constitute a taking of plaintiffs’ elemental property rights by eminent domain.” The court remanded the case for a parcel-by-parcel determination of just compensation. Shortly after the decision in Kirby, the North Carolina Legislature repealed the Map Act, thereby changing an indefinite taking into a finite one. This set the stage for a valuation of the countless properties that had been encumbered by the Map Act for years in order to assess the just compensation due. Further complicating the matter were the actions of NCDOT in filing condemnation actions against some, but not all, of the impacted properties. In the end, the N.C. Supreme Court issued a decision upholding the damages awarded in the first of the property owner cases to go to trial, but doing so in a way that leaves open the valuation methodology to be employed for future Map Act cases. In Chappelle, the Court ruled […]

After being chased by police for stealing clothing from a Walmart, a man barricaded himself in a house in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Over a 19 hour period, using explosives and a battering ram attached to an armored personnel carrier, the local police department’s SWAT team intentionally destroyed the landowner’s house to force the fugitive to surrender. Afterwards, they offered the family $5,000 “to help with temporary living expenses.” The family sued, arguing that they were entitled to just compensation under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution for the intentional destruction of their house. The Tenth  Circuit, however, held that no compensation was due because the home was destroyed pursuant to the police power rather than the power of eminent domain. To read more about the background of the case click here. To review OCA’s Amicus Brief on a cert petition to the United States Supreme Court click here.

In one of the first comprehensive court opinions on an issue of national interest, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected business owners’ challenges to the recent shut down orders issued by Governor Tom Wolf in response to COVID-19 on various legal grounds. Ruling that the orders were supported by a compelling public health rationale and were not a regulatory taking of property because they were temporary in nature, the court upheld them. For a full review and analysis of the opinion, click here.

OCA Hawaii member Robert Thomas joined Keli’i Akina, President and CEO of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii on April 14th for an important Webinar on Safety vs. Freedom in the time of COVID-19.  For those who missed the webinar, you can view a list of the important topics covered as well as a recording of the entire webinar by clicking here.