Cary v. U.S.

Decision Date16 January 2009
Docket NumberNo. 2008-5022.,2008-5022.
Citation552 F.3d 1373
PartiesRichard CARY, Susan Cary, Patricia Geerts, Sharon Henry, James Herzog, Diane Knueffer, Patricia Martin, Robert S. Martin, Janet Marie Priatt, Dona Schneider, Douglas Schwaebe, Carl Schweikert, Katherine Schweikert, David Southcott, and Mary Carol Wilder, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. UNITED STATES, Defendant-Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit

Mark S. Grotefeld, Grotefeld & Hoffmann, LLP, of Chicago, IL, argued for plaintiffs-appellants. With him on the brief were Todd C. Harshman and Waylon J. Pickett, of San Francisco, CA.

Katherine W. Hazard, Attorney, Environment and Natural Resources Division, United States Department of Justice, of Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellee. With her on the brief were Ronald J. Tenpas, Assistant Attorney General, and Katherine J. Barton and Marc A. Smith, Attorneys.

Before MAYER, LINN, and MOORE, Circuit Judges.

MAYER, Circuit Judge.

Richard Cary, et al., ("landowners") appeal the judgment of the United States Court of Federal Claims denying their claims against the United States for the taking of their property without just compensation by inverse condemnation in the 2003 California "Cedar Fire." Cary v. United States, 79 Fed.Cl. 145 (2007). Because the landowners have not stated a claim for which relief may be granted, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

The landowners are aggrieved owners of properties neighboring the Cleveland National Forest ("CNF"), near San Diego, California. On October 25, 2003, a deer hunter lost in the forest lit a signal fire to aid his rescue. Named the Cedar Fire, the fire spread and became one of the largest conflagrations in California history. The fire claimed the lives of fifteen people, and consumed more than 273,000 acres of land, 2,232 residences, twenty-two commercial structures, and 566 outbuildings. The landowners' properties were in the burned area.

Fires are an unavoidable fact of life in Southern California, where they frequently and predictably occur during a "fire season." The area including the CNF is so prone to fire that its fire season is year-round, with Santa Ana winds exacerbating the likelihood and intensity of fires between September and December. It is believed that fires have occurred seasonally in the CNF since before humans lived in North America. According to the landowners, early fires were frequent, but of low-intensity, burning out without intervention. Beginning in 1911, the United States Forest Service implemented a policy to suppress all fires in the CNF, originally to protect timber and water reserves. Today such reasons include protecting natural resources, air quality, and endangered species, and for public recreation.

In 1968, the Forest Service ended its policy of mandatory suppression of fires, and replaced it with a policy of selective suppression, allowing fires to run their natural course under prescribed conditions, such as occurring late in the fire season. Within a few years, the Forest Service recognized that some places in the Southern California fire zone, including the CNF, were sustaining particularly high fuel loads which posed a greater risk for conflagration, and implemented policies called "fuel modification" which were designed to clear and thin flammable vegetation and lower the risk of conflagration. The Forest Service conducted prescribed burns in the CNF to lower the risk of fire, although they were prevented from using prescribed burns in some areas because of such obstacles as riparian area or endangered species protection.

In 2003, the year of the Cedar Fire, 97% of fires were extinguished within twenty-four hours of their discovery. This near total suppression of fires, the landowners allege, altered the "fire ecology" of the CNF by disrupting the natural, frequent, low-intensity fires. They argue that low-intensity fires consumed the underbrush and other flammable vegetation in the forest, and so the suppression of fires allowed the vegetation to accumulate into unnaturally thick stands of trees and underbrush. Any fire in the CNF, if not immediately controlled, would become a devastating firestorm, and on October 25, 2003, the lost hunter illegally set such a fire. Because it occurred late in the day, fire crews were prevented from reaching it immediately in light of Forest Service policy which prohibited firefighting after sunset. By the next day, it had become a major conflagration and eventually consumed the landowners' properties.

The landowners filed suit in the United States Court of Federal Claims on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated who sustained damage to a property interest as a result of the fire. They accused the Forest Service of taking the known calculated risk that its land management policies in the CNF would result in a taking of adjacent landowners' property in the event of a fire originating in the CNF that spread outside its boundaries. Thus, they alleged that the United States took their property by inverse condemnation without just compensation.

The government moved for judgment on the pleadings because the landowners failed to allege facts showing that the Forest Service management policies in the CNF effected a compensable taking of their property for public use under the Fifth Amendment. It argued that the fire was caused by a lost hunter illegally setting a fire, not government policy. The court entered judgment for the government: "Our difficulty is not with the foreseeability of the harm plaintiffs suffered, but with the cause of the harm." Cary, 79 Fed.Cl. at 148. The court further stated that unless the hunter was acting as its agent, causation could not be attributed to the government. Id. The landowners appealed.

DISCUSSION

When reviewing appeals in which the Court of Federal Claims entered judgment on the pleadings pursuant to its Rule 12(c), we apply the same standard of review as a case dismissed pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and review the judgment de novo. See Chang v. United States, 859 F.2d 893, 894 (Fed.Cir.1988). We must presume that the facts are as alleged in the complaint, and make all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. Gould Inc. v. United States, 935 F.2d 1271, 1274 (Fed. Cir.1991). To state a claim, the complaint must allege facts "plausibly suggesting (not merely consistent with)" a showing of entitlement to relief. See Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 1966, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007). The factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level. Id. at 1965. This does not require the plaintiff to set out in detail the facts upon which the claim is based, but enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face. Id. at 1974. The landowners also must prove subject matter jurisdiction. Mars Inc. v. Kabushiki-Kaisha Nippon Conlux, 24 F.3d 1368, 1372 (Fed. Cir.1994).

Whether a taking under the Fifth Amendment has occurred is a question of law with factual underpinnings. Alves v. United States, 133 F.3d 1454, 1456 (Fed. Cir.1998). Therefore, we review the determination of law de novo, while in this case the facts must be accepted as alleged.

The landowners placed the liability of the United States under the Tucker Act, which grants the Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction over claims for money damages "against the United States founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of Congress or any regulation of an executive department, or upon any express or implied contract with the United States, or for liquidated or unliquidated damages in cases not sounding in tort." 28 U.S.C. § 1491(a)(1) (2000); United States v. Mitchell, 463 U.S. 206, 216, 103 S.Ct. 2961, 77 L.Ed.2d 580 (1983). We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(3).

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides in part that "private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation." Because the government conducted no formal exercise of eminent domain, this case is for alleged "inverse condemnation." See Moden v. United States, 404 F.3d 1335, 1342 (Fed.Cir.2005). Inverse condemnation is "a shorthand description of the manner in which a landowner recovers just compensation for a taking of his property when condemnation proceedings have not been instituted." Id. (quoting United States v. Clarke, 445 U.S. 253, 257, 100 S.Ct. 1127, 63 L.Ed.2d 373 (1980)) (quotation marks omitted).

The landowners rely on an analogy between the fires here and flooding in cases typified by Ridge Line, Inc. v. United States, 346 F.3d 1346 (Fed.Cir.2003) which set out a two part test that can be characterized as causation and appropriation. In the causation prong, it must be shown that "the government intend[ed] to invade a protected property interest or [that] the asserted invasion [was] the direct, natural, or probable result of an authorized activity and not the incidental or consequential injury inflicted by the action." 346 F.3d at 1355 (citation removed). The landowners allege that two Forest Service policies constituted the authorized activities that caused the Cedar Fire. First, they cite the circa 1911 policy of suppressing all forest fires in the CNF and the nearly century long suppression of all or nearly all fires, instead of allowing them to consume the accumulated fuel load in the forest. Second, they cite the policy of allowing human visitors to enter the forest for recreational purposes. The fire, they say, was the direct, natural, probable result of these policies.

To prevail the landowners must first show that the government intended to invade a protected property interest. Clearly, the government did not intend to take the landowners' land by use of an uncontrolled wildfire, and they do not allege that it did. Instead, they say that because they d...

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