Eminent Domain Report

In Washington State, when a public agency determines it needs to acquire property for a public project, the agency will work directly with the private property owner to negotiate a purchase price for the property rights needed. However, if the agency reaches an impasse in the negotiations with the property owner, the public agency may turn to its eminent domain power and initiate a condemnation lawsuit. A condemnation lawsuit triggers the formal legal process for the agency to take private property for a public purpose without the owner’s consent in exchange for payment of just ...

This seems like common sense, but a public agency cannot pursue an inverse condemnation cause of action for damages suffered from its own public improvements. Yet that is exactly what the County of Santa Cruz recently attempted against another local public agency. The Court denied leave to amend to add an inverse condemnation cause of action and left unanswered a significant policy question on whether a public agency can pursue a claim for inverse condemnation at all, or whether inverse condemnation only applies to damages to private (not public) property. … 

During the past several years, we’ve been following an eminent domain case playing out in Mendocino County related to the Skunk Train. In 2023, the court concluded that the Skunk Train operator, Mendocino Railway, did not have the right to take property because it was not proposing to put the property to a public use. In a recent unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeal revisited this conclusion, and addressed whether a railroad corporation qualified as a public utility with the authority to exercise eminent domain, and what evidentiary showing is required to establish public use ...

In 2024, in what was heralded as a big win for developers in California, the U.S. Supreme Court upended decades of California precedent and held that legislatively enacted development impact fees must satisfy the “essential nexus” and “rough proportionality” tests established in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987) 483 U.S. 825 and Dolan v. City of Tigard (1994) 512 U.S. 374. Sheetz v. County of El Dorado (2024) 601 U.S. 267. But the Supreme Court did not decide whether the legislatively enacted fee program at issue in Sheetz actually failed to comply with ...

Join me on January 24, 2025, as I participate in the “Masters of Trial” panel during CLE International’s 27th Annual California Eminent Domain Conference in Irvine, CA. Our panel will discuss effective direct and cross examination of appraisers and other experts.

CLE International’s California Eminent Domain Conference provides the opportunity to network with attorneys, appraisers, agency representatives, right of way professionals and others from around the state, while you hear all points of view on the most important and timely condemnation issues. I hope to see ...