Cent. Puget Sound Reg'l Transit Auth. v. Marino
| Decision Date | 26 September 2022 |
| Docket Number | 82426-1-I |
| Parties | CENTRAL PUGET SOUND REGIONAL TRANSIT AUTHORITY, a regional transit authority, dba SOUND TRANSIT, Respondent, v. LEONARD S. & KARI C. MARINO (EL169 & 13 EL806), individually and the marital community composed thereof,[†] Defendants, IRIS GUY & JANE/JOHN DOE GUY (EL638), individually and the marital community composed thereof; MARK S. & REGINA C. HANLON (EL666), individually and the marital community composed thereof; ADAM SHAFER & HOLLY HART- SHAFER (EL679), individually and the marital community composed thereof; SUNG GON MAENG & JINSUN BAE (EL739), individually and the marital community composed thereof; CHRISTOPHER SMITH & LEAH ANDERSON (EL776), individually and the marital community composed thereof; DAVID K. & NATIVIDAD M. SOIKE (EL778), individually and the marital community composed thereof; MARTIN W. & HEATHER H. YAMAMOTO (EL874), individually and the marital community composed thereof; and OLGA RUZAEVA and JANE/JOHN DOE RUZAEVA (EL875), individually and the marital community composed thereof, Appellants. |
| Court | Washington Court of Appeals |
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
Central Puget Sound Regional Transit (Sound Transit), seeking to construct a light rail station, purchased property in Bellevue's Surrey Downs neighborhood. This property was encumbered by "Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions" (CC&Rs) prohibiting Sound Transit's intended use, and the agency therefore began a condemnation action to remove those restrictions. Before the case went to trial, Sound Transit acquired the votes it needed to amend the CC&Rs and dismissed the case. Its dismissal was vacated after a collection of owners argued that the agency had abandoned the case and they were owed fees and costs as a result. The matter then proceeded to trial under two theories of liability: that Sound Transit committed a taking by engaging in construction activities on its property before amending the CC&Rs, and that it committed a taking by denying the owners their ability to enforce the CC&Rs. A jury awarded the owners $1,000 each.
On appeal, the owners contest a number of rulings by the trial court. Finding no merit to their arguments, we affirm.
The Surrey Downs neighborhood comprises four plats, subdivisions that include multiple properties: Hearthstone Addition Part No. 1, Hearthstone Addition Part No. 2, Surrey Downs Addition No. 1, and Surrey Downs Addition No. 2. Each of these plats is governed by certain CC&Rs. Each CC&R, among other restrictions, limits its constituent properties to residential use.
Sound Transit initiated this proceeding in April 2016 when it filed an eminent domain petition to amend the CC&Rs.[1] The CC&Rs' residential use restrictions blocked Sound Transit's intended use of land it had purchased at the edge of the neighborhood construction of a light rail station. Sound Transit's goal in filing the petition was to remove the residential use restrictions as they applied to the property on which it planned construction. It therefore sought to "ascertain the just compensation for the taking and damaging" effected by the amendment of the covenants.
Some property owners-all located within the Surrey Downs No. 1 and Surrey Downs No. 2 plats-opposed the condemnation.[2] In a June 2017 summary judgment motion they asserted that even were Sound Transit to prevail, it would not have acquired the rights needed to operate the planned light rail station. They argued that private easements and noise and vibration restrictions of the CC&Rs were independent bars to the station's construction, and they requested compensation for these additional alleged takings. They did not prevail on their motion and their petition for discretionary review was denied.
Meanwhile over the course of roughly two years following the petition's filing, Sound Transit had voluntarily dismissed many of the named respondents- of which there were initially close to two hundred-after reaching private agreements with them. It obtained property rights of other respondents by default judgment and dismissed them as well. Through this process-and by virtue of its ownership of the properties it had purchased before filing the petition-Sound Transit acquired the rights and votes it needed to satisfy the amendment procedures of the various CC&Rs by early 2018.[3] The now amended CC&Rs read:
Having acquired the power to amend the CC&Rs independent of its condemnation action, Sound Transit moved to voluntarily dismiss the case. The motion passed without response from the remaining litigating property owners and was granted by the trial court.
The still-litigating owners then moved for attorney fees and costs under
RCW 8.25.075(1)(b), which directs the court to award condemnees costs and fees if "[t]he proceeding is abandoned by the condemnor." The trial court concluded that the equities supported a theory of abandonment and reserved its decision on fees. Four days later, before the court had readdressed fees, Sound Transit moved to vacate the voluntary dismissal order. It argued that vacation would "cure[] the unintended consequences identified by the Court in the Abandonment Order," returning the parties to their respective positions prior to the dismissal. The trial court agreed and vacated the dismissal. The owners sought and were denied discretionary review of this ruling.
After the reinstatement of the case, a second set of cross-motions for summary judgment, a corresponding motion to clarify, and motions in limine refined the claims that would be argued at trial.
Sound Transit, having amended the CC&Rs, did not believe that trial was necessary. It moved for summary judgment, asking that the court enter an order determining that the respondents to the condemnation action no longer had compensable rights because" 'the property rights sought to be altered . . . [have] already been acquired.' "
The owners filed a cross-motion, pointing again to other unamended provisions in the covenants to assert that the agency was still bound by certain restrictions. They specifically pointed to noise, dust, and vibration restrictions of the CC&Rs.[4] Here, the owners presented evidence that Sound Transit had started construction before the CC&Rs were amended and asserted the agency had violated the CC&Rs' noise and dust restrictions in doing so.[5]
The trial court granted Sound Transit's motion in part, concluding that the amendments to the CC&Rs had extinguished most of the relevant rights. It permitted the owners' inverse condemnation claims surrounding noise and vibration to go forward to trial, however, because of the existence of genuine issues of material fact. It limited compensation to loss of valuation in property for the period of time until the taking was completed by the amendment of the CC&Rs. Finally, it noted that the order did not address whether the owners possessed any claims related to Sound Transit's actions after amending the CC&Rs.
The court revisited certain issues after the owners moved for clarification. It defined the relevant taking as "the de facto taking of [the owners'] right to enforce the CC&Rs on the Sound Transit owned Parcels . . ., a taking that occurred when Sound Transit's activities on the Parcels violated the CC&Rs." It confirmed that compensation would be decided by "the difference between the fair market value of each [owners]'s entire tract before the acquisition and the fair market value of the remainder after acquisition." And it ruled that the taking's valuation date would be determined before trial.
That order was not, however, the final word on these issues. At the hearings on motions in limine, the court said it had left some ambiguity as to exactly what the claims at trial were. It decided that in fact "there are two parts of damages allowed: The temporary taking, noise, nuisance, dust; and the final taking, the difference between the fair market value of Respondent's entire tract before acquisition and the fair market value of remainder after acquisition." For the temporary taking, the court ruled that the damages would be calculated as lost rental value. Surprised, Sound Transit noted that they had not disclosed relevant witnesses or exhibits. Acknowledging that the last-minute change in the theory of the case prejudiced the agency, the court continued trial by a week.
Trial proceeded in fits and starts, but began to face logistical complications in earnest once the owners began their case-in-chief. The court had ruled during motions in limine that the owners themselves could testify on the value of their homes. But it had strictly limited the content of that testimony to ensure it did not trespass into territory typically reserved for experts.
At the start of the owners' case-in-chief, they began to give testimony that defied these rulings. They justified their testimony as responsive to the newly-permitted testimony from Sound Transit's experts, meant to address the trial's expanded legal theories. In the face of that and other scheduling limitations, the trial court required further disclosure from the owners, postponed their testimony until...
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