Peters v. Village of Clifton

• Decision Date: 22 August 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-3735.,06-3735.
• Citation: 498 F.3d 727
• Parties: Bruce PETERS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. VILLAGE OF CLIFTON, an Illinois Municipal Corporation, Alexander Cox & McTaggert, Incorporated and Joseph McTaggert, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

498 F.3d 727

Bruce PETERS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. VILLAGE OF CLIFTON, an Illinois Municipal Corporation, Alexander Cox & McTaggert, Incorporated and Joseph McTaggert, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 06-3735.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 1, 2007.

Decided August 22, 2007.

J. David Breemer (argued), Pacific Legal Foundation, Sacramento, CA, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

James C. Kearns, Tamara K. Hackman (argued), Heyl, Royster, Voelker & Allen, Urbana, IL, Jeffrey W. Tock, Harrington, Tock & Royse, Champaign, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before RIPPLE, MANION and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge.

Bruce Peters brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Village of Clifton ("Village"), Alexander, Cox & McTaggert, Inc. ("ACM") and Joseph McTaggert. He alleged that the defendants had trespassed on his property in order to expand the Village's sewage discharge system and, in so doing, had committed an unconstitutional taking of his property in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. On the Village's Rule 12(b)(1) motion, the district court dismissed the action. Mr. Peters appealed. We agree that the district court properly dismissed the action, and, accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

I BACKGROUND

A. Facts

Mr. Peters owns a parcel of agricultural land just outside the eastern edge of the village limits of Clifton, Illinois. ACM owns agricultural property within the village limits that directly abuts Mr. Peters' land. Running eastward along Mr. Peters' property is a waterway that empties into a drainage ditch. At some unknown time in the past, prior to Mr. Peters' ownership of the property, farm drainage tile had been buried on Mr. Peters' land. The tile was parallel to and beneath the waterway. The Village had an existing sewage line in the vicinity for some time. The line ran under ACM's property.

Mr. Peters claims that, in 2005, the private defendants, at the instruction of the Village, trespassed onto his land, dug up the old, non-functioning sewer tile and installed new, larger tile. This newly-installed tile, Mr. Peters contends, was then connected to the Village's existing sewage tile "at or about the property line" between his land and that owned by ACM. R.1 at 4. The Village thus created, he maintains, an "unregulated[,] unlicensed sanitary sewer system discharging sewage through the farm tile within [Mr. Peters'] property." Id. at 3. Mr. Peters believes that the Village made these improvements in an attempt to make the adjacent land within the Village boundaries suitable for development.

Mr. Peters claims that, to install the new tile, ACM, with the consent of the Village, came onto his property and used "various poisons on the nature preserve bordering the above ground drainage ditch, underneath which is the [Village's] illegal sanitary sewage line." He claims that this action destroyed trees and destabilized the land. Id. at 4. Mr. Peters claims that acres of his farmland were rendered unsuitable for agricultural uses because of soil compaction and drainage of "untreated sewage and waste materials." Id. at 5.

B. District Court Proceedings

Mr. Peters filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. He asserted that the defendants had committed an unauthorized taking of his property in violation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution as made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. See Chicago, B. & Q.R. Co. v. City of Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 233, 236-37, 17 S.Ct. 581, 41 L.Ed. 979 (1897). Mr. Peters requested compensatory damages for the taking and a permanent injunction forbidding the Village from discharging any materials through the drainage tiles on his property.¹

The Village moved to dismiss the action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, claiming that the action was not ripe. Specifically, the Village contended that, before Mr. Peters could assert a takings claim in federal court, he was required first to seek compensation through appropriate state channels. This course was mandated, in the Village's view, by the decision of the Supreme Court in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson County, 473 U.S. 172, 105 S.Ct. 3108, 87 L.Ed.2d 126 (1985).

In his memorandum opposing the motion to dismiss, Mr. Peters maintained that the Village was not a home rule municipality under Illinois law, and, therefore, had no eminent domain power with respect to his land. Mr. Peters further asserted that, because of the Village's status, he could not institute inverse condemnation proceedings against it and therefore was exempted from Williamson County's exhaustion requirement on futility grounds.

The district court agreed with the Village that, under Williamson County, Mr. Peters was obligated to show either that he had exhausted state remedies or that those remedies were unavailable to him. The district court assumed for purposes of its analysis that the Village had no eminent domain powers under Illinois law. The court concluded, however, that, if the only remedy the state provided for a taking was dependent upon a particular jurisdiction's home rule status, the lack of an available remedy in a case such as this one would violate the Takings Clause of the Illinois Constitution. The district court held that, absent explicit authority from the Illinois courts that no state remedy was available for takings effected by non-home rule jurisdictions, Mr. Peters was required to seek compensation from the state, whether titled an inverse condemnation proceeding or a suit in tort.² Because Mr. Peters had not availed himself of state procedures for obtaining compensation, the court concluded that his claim for a violation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment was not ripe. Accordingly, the district court dismissed the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.³

II DISCUSSION

We review de novo a district court's order dismissing a case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under Rule 12(b)(1). Small v. Chao, 398 F.3d 894, 897 (7th Cir.2005). We must accept all facts stated in the complaint as true and must draw all reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Tricontinental Indus., Ltd. v. PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, 475 F.3d 824, 833 (7th Cir.2007).

A.

We pause at this point to set forth in some detail Mr. Peters' arguments. In support of his contention that Williamson County does not require exhaustion in this case and that therefore the matter is ripe for federal adjudication, Mr. Peters makes three principal, but interrelated, arguments. First, Mr. Peters claims that Williamson County, by its terms, is limited to suits for compensation, not suits seeking to enjoin an "unlawful" taking, and, therefore, at minimum, his claim for injunctive relief should proceed immediately. Next, he claims that Williamson County does not require him to pursue speculative and unproven compensation procedures available in Illinois. Finally, he contends that Williamson County expresses a prudential ripeness requirement, not an Article III requirement, and that compelling reasons support a different prudential rule in a case such as this one.⁴

More specifically, Mr. Peters contends that the Village's sanitary drainage system and the occupation and use of his property for that system are illegal and unauthorized. In his view, the Village has no ownership rights over the property or over the ditch and tile on his property. Nor has the Village, as a municipal entity without home rule authority, any power of eminent domain over that property. Consequently, he argues, he is entitled to injunctive relief to end the occupation of the property by the Village. He relies on our decision in Daniels v. Area Plan Commission, 306 F.3d 445 (7th Cir.2002).

Mr. Peters then submits that there is another, and related, reason why he should not be required to observe the exhaustion requirement of Williamson County. He notes that Williamson County requires the exhaustion of state remedies only when the state procedures are available and adequate. Williamson County, 473 U.S. at 194, 197, 105 S.Ct. 3108. When no such procedure is available in state court, the requirement is inapplicable, and a litigant may resort to a takings claim in federal court without any antecedent litigation in the state forum. He contends that, because of its non-home rule status, the Village is exempt from an inverse condemnation remedy and, therefore, the only possible state remedies available to him are speculative and theoretical. Williamson County, he reminds us, imposes on him no obligation to expend time and resources exploring such gossamer paths. The state avenue of relief, he further reminds us, must be "reasonable" and "certain" at the time of the taking. Id. at 194, 105 S.Ct. 3108 (quoting Regional Rail Reorganizational Act Cases, Blanchette v. Connecticut General Ins. Corp., 419 U.S. 102, 124-25 (1974)).

Mr. Peters elaborates further that there is no specific statutory remedy for inverse condemnation in Illinois and that, therefore, a landowner who has been denied the use of his property by the government, without an eminent domain action having been brought, must bring a mandamus action against that governmental entity to compel it to institute eminent domain proceedings. For such a mandamus action to succeed, however, the defendant governmental entity must have the authority to carry out the task that the plaintiff claims it has a clear legal duty to perform. Here, he continues, the Village, by virtue of its status as a non-home rule municipality, has no authority to bring the eminent domain proceeding which Mr. Peters believes should have been brought. Moreover, he continues, with one exception not relevant here, the Village's powers are limited to its own territory, and...