Goldblatt v. Town of Hempstead, New York

• Decision Date: 14 May 1962
• Docket Number: No. 78,78
• Parties: Herbert W. GOLDBLATT et al., Appellants, v. TOWN OF HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

369 U.S. 590

82 S.Ct. 987

8 L.Ed.2d 130

Herbert W. GOLDBLATT et al., Appellants,

v TOWN OF HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK.

No. 78.

Argued Jan. 15, 16, 1962.

Decided May 14, 1962.

Milton I. Newman, New York City, for the appellants.

William C. Mattison, Brooklyn, N.Y., for the appellee.

Mr. Justice CLARK delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Town of Hempstead has enacted an ordinance regulating dredging and pit excavating on property within its limits. Appellants, who engaged in such operations prior to the enactment of the ordinance, claim that it in effect prevents them from continuing their business and therefore takes their property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The trial court held that the ordinance was a valid exercise of the town's police power, 19 Misc.2d 176, 186 N.Y.S.2d 577, and the Appellate Division affirmed, 9 A.D.2d 941, 196 N.Y.S.2d 573. The New York Court of Appeals in a divided opinion affirmed. 9 N.Y.2d 101, 211 N.Y.S.2d 185, 172 N.E.2d 562. We noted probable jurisdiction, 366 U.S. 942, 81 S.Ct. 1673, 6 L.Ed.2d 854, and having heard argument we now affirm the judgment.

Appellant Goldblatt owns a 38-acre tract within the Town of Hempstead. At the time of the present litigation appellant Builders Sand and Gravel Corporation was mining sand and gravel on this lot, a use to which the lot had been put continuously since 1927. Before the end of the first year the excavation had reached the water table leaving a waterfilled crater which has been widened and deepened to the point that it is now a 20-acre lake with an average depth of 25 feet. The town has expanded around this excavation, and today within a radius of 3,500 feet there are more than 2,200 homes and four public schools with a combined enrollment of 4,500 pupils.

The present action is but one of a series of steps undertaken by the town in an effort to regulate mining excavations within its limits. A 1945 ordinance, No. 16, provided that such pits must be enclosed by a wire fence and comply with certain berm and slope requirements. Although appellants complied with this ordinance, the town sought an injunction against further excavation as being violative of a zoning ordinance. This failed because appellants were found to be 'conducting a prior non-conforming use on the premises * * *.' 135 N.Y.L.J., issue 52, p. 12 (1956). The town did not appeal.

In 1958 the town amended Ordinance No. 16 to prohibit any excavating below the water table¹ and to impose an affirmative duty to refill any excavation presently below that level. The new amendment also made the berm, slope, and fence requirements more onerous.

In 1959 the town brought the present action to enjoin further mining by the appellants on the grounds that they had not complied with the ordinance, as amended, nor acquired a mining permit as required by it.² Appellants contended, inter alia, that the ordinance was unconstitutional because (1) it was not regulatory of their business but completely prohibitor and confiscated their property without compensation, (2) it deprived them of the benefit of the favorable judgment arising from the previous zoning litigation, and (3) it constituted ex post facto legislation. However, the trial court did not agree, and the appellants were enjoined from conducting further operations on the lot until they had obtained a permit and had complied with the new provisions of Ordinance No. 16.

Concededly the ordinance completely prohibits a beneficial use to which the property has previously been devoted. However, such a characterization does not tell us whether or not the ordinance is unconstitutional. It is an oft-repeated truism that every regulation necessarily speaks as a prohibition. If this ordinance is otherwise a valid exercise of the town's police powers, the fact that it deprives the property of its most beneficial use does not render it unconstitutional. Walls v. Midland Carbon Co., 254 U.S. 300, 41 S.Ct. 118, 65 L.Ed. 276 (1920); Hadacheck v. Sebastian, 239 U.S 394, 36 S.Ct. 143, 60 L.Ed. 348 (1915); Reinman v. Little Rock, 237 U.S. 171, 35 S.Ct. 511, 59 L.Ed. 900 (1915); Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 8 S.Ct. 273, 31 L.Ed. 205 (1887); see Laurel Hill Cemetery v. San Francisco, 216 U.S. 358, 30 S.Ct. 301, 54 L.Ed. 515 (1910). As pointed out in Mugler v. Kansas, supra, 123 U.S. at 668—669, 8 S.Ct. at 301:

'(T)he present case must be governed by principles that do not involve the power of eminent domain, in the exercise of which property may not be taken for public use without compensation. A prohibition simply upon the use of property for purposes that are declared, by valid legislation, to be injurious to the health, morals, or safety of the community, cannot, in any just sense, be deemed a taking or an appropriation of property for the public benefit. Such legislation does not disturb the owner in the control or use of his property for lawful purposes, nor restrict his right to dispose of it, but is only a declaration by the state that its use by any one, for certain forbidden purposes, is prejudicial to the public interests. * * * The power which the states have of prohibiting such use by individuals of their property, as will be prejudicial to the health, the morals, or the safety of the public, is not, and, consistently with the existence and safety of organized society, cannot be, burdened with the condition that the state must compensate such individual owners for pecuniary losses they may sustain, by reason of their not being permitted, by a noxious use of their property, to inflict injury upon the community.'

Nor is it of controlling significance that the 'use' prohibited here is of the soil itself as opposed to a 'use' upon the soil, cf. United States v. Central Eureka Mining Co., 357 U.S. 155, 78 S.Ct. 1097, 2 L.Ed.2d 1228 (1958), or that the use prohibited is arguably not a common-law nuisance, e.g., Reinman v. Little Rock, supra.

This is not to say, however, that governmental action in the form of regulation cannot be so onerous as to constitute a taking which constitutionally requires compensation. Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 43 S.Ct. 158, 67 L.Ed. 322 (1922); see United States v. Central Eureka Mining Co., supra. There is no set formula to determine where regulation ends and taking begins. Although a comparison of values before and after is relevant, see Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, supra, it is by no means conclusive, see Hadacheck v. Sebastian, supra, where a diminution in value from $800,000 to $60,000 was upheld. How far regulation may go before it becomes a taking we need not now decide, for there is no evidence in the present record which even remotely suggests that prohibition of further mining will reduce the value of the lot in question.³ Indulging in the usual presumption of constitutionality, infra, 369 U.S., p. 596, 82 S.Ct., p. 991, we find no indication that the prohibitory effect of Ordinance No. 16 is sufficient to render it an unconstitutional taking if it is otherwise a valid police regulation.

The question, therefore, narrows to whether the prohibition of further excavation below the water table is a valid exercise of the town's police power. The term 'police power' connotes the time-tested conceptional limit of public encroachment upon private interests. Except for the substitution of the familiar standard of 'reasonableness,' this Court has generally refrained from announcing any specific criteria. The classic statement of the rule in Lawton v. Steele, 152 U.S. 133, 137, 14 S.Ct. 499, 501, 38 L.Ed. 385 (1894), is still valid today:

'To justify the state in * * * interposing its authority in behalf of the public, it must appear—First, that the interests of the public * * * require such interference; and, second, that the means are reasonably necessary for the accomplishment of the purpose, and not unduly oppressive upon individuals.'

Even this rule is not applied with strict precision, for this...