2015

The property owner/appellant raised a whole bunch of legal issues in City of Kansas City v. Powell, No. WD 76861 (Oct. 7, 2014), a case decided by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District. 

The city slated Ms. Powell’s house for condemnation because it wanted to build a new police station and crime lab. The court took 28 pages to reject each of Powell’s arguments on appeal, but what comes through between the lines is that she didn’t quite behave:

On September 9, 2012, a special process server attempted to serve Powell at 2718 Brooklyn Avenue with a summons for the condemnation hearing. The residence at 2718 Brooklyn belonged to Powell‟s mother, but at the time, the City believed Powell to reside there as well, based upon its perception that 2611 Brooklyn was in a state of rehabilitation and uninhabitable. A woman answered the door at 2718 Brooklyn and…

Continue Reading Should Property Owners Play Nice With Condemnors?

Pennington v. Gwinnett County, No. A14A0999 (Oct. 9, 2014) was review of a grant of summary judgment, so the facts, viewed in light most favorable to the Penningtons, sure make it look like the county engaged in some sharp practices. 

The Penningtons had an agreement with T-Mobile, which gave it the option to lease the Pennington property for a tower. Shortly thereafter, T-Mobile filed its application to build the tower with the county’s planning department. After a series of delays requested by T-Mobile, during which the county amended its policy which prohibited cell towers on county property, the county denied the application. And then T-Mobile and the county entered into an agreement to put the tower on county land.

The Penningtons sued for inverse condemation, asserting “that the county’s interference scuttled their deal with T-Mobile South.” Slip op. at 1.  

The court of appeals concluded that an option contract…

Continue Reading Georgia App: County Busting Your Deal Isn’t A Taking

Under the Montana Constitution, a property owner who prevails in a condemnation matter is entitled to an award of “necessary expenses of litigation.”

In Wohl v City of Missoula, 2014 MT 310 11-25-2014, NO. DA 14-0161 (Nov. 25, 2014), the Montana Supreme Court concluded that property owners who ultimately prevailed after two appeals were entitled in the second appeal to recover the attorneys fees they incurred during the prior appeal. 

The Dissent posits that because we rejected Landowners’ cross-appeal on their alleged civil rights violations and ruled in favor of the City on the calculation of the underlying damage award in Wohl I, this somehow mitigates against Wohls’ entitlement to attorney fees. This argument ignores the fact that Landowners plainly satisfied the requirements of § 70-30-305(2), MCA, as noted above, thus making the award of the expenses of litigation to them mandatory under the statute. The Dissent cites no authority for…

Continue Reading Montana Considers Attorneys Fees In Second Appeal

In 118th Street Kenosha, LLC v. Wisconsin Dep’t of Transportation, No. 2012AP2784 (Dec. 10, 2014), a condemnation case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court considered these three issues:

(1) Is a temporary limited easement compensable under Wis. Stat. § 32.09(6g)?

(2) Assuming that a temporary limited easement is compensable under Wis. Stat. § 32.09(6g), did the circuit court appropriately exercise its discretion when it excluded evidence of the commercial property’s diminution in value from lost direct access and proximity to 118th Avenue because the temporary limited easement did not cause the loss?

(3) Is the LLC barred from recovering compensation for the commercial property’s loss of direct access and proximity to 118th Avenue because the relocation of 118th Avenue was a proper exercise of the DOT’s police power?

The crux of the issue before this court is whether damages under Wis. Stat. § 32.09(6g) for the temporary limited easement include the commercial property’s diminution in value caused by its loss of direct access…

Continue Reading Wisconsin: No Compensation For Loss Of Access Because Lost Access Not “Direct”

We didn’t quite finish posting all of the 2014 cases in our “for the blog” folder before the ball dropped, so we’re going to use the next couple of days to clear that queue.

Short postings, little analysis. But we’ll start 2015 off clean, we will.

First up, Buck’s Inc. v. City of Omaha, No. A-13-980 (Nov. 25, 2014), in which the Nebraska Court of Appeals held that a property owner had no inverse condemnation claim when road improvements eliminated a cut in the median, which prevented left turns into the property, because the property continued to enjoy access, just not in the same manner as before. 

Buck’s, Inc. v. City of Omaha, No. A-13-980 (Neb. App. Nov. 25, 2014)

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Continue Reading Nebraska App: Cutting Off One Access Point OK, Since Property Had Others