Kruse v. Village of Chagrin Falls, Ohio

• Decision Date: 06 March 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-3435,94-3435
• Citation: 74 F.3d 694
• Parties: Ronald W. KRUSE and Sylvia A. Kruse, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. VILLAGE OF CHAGRIN FALLS, OHIO, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 694

74 F.3d 694

Ronald W. KRUSE and Sylvia A. Kruse, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. VILLAGE OF CHAGRIN FALLS, OHIO, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 94-3435.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Argued Oct. 11, 1995.

Decided Jan. 29, 1996.

Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc Denied March 6, 1996.

Eli Manos (argued and briefed), Michael T. Gavin, Mansour, Gavin, Gerlack & Manos, Cleveland, OH, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Edwin J. Hollern (argued and briefed), Ulmer & Berne, Columbus, OH, for defendant-appellee.

Before: MARTIN and BATCHELDER, Circuit Judges, and EDMUNDS, District Judge. ^*

BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge.

The Kruses appeal the district court's dismissal, for lack of jurisdiction, of their lawsuit against the Village of Chagrin Falls. Because, as we explain, the relevant facts are not in dispute and we conclude that this action is indeed ripe, we reverse the decision below and remand with instructions.

I.

One afternoon in June of 1986, the Kruse family of Chagrin Falls returned home to discover, to their intense amazement and dismay, that their backyard was missing. The back of their property had been laid waste, and the family's house was hanging at the edge of a precipice where their lawn, trees and other landscaping had been when they left home that morning. Agents of the Village had been busily at work that day, devastating the Kruses' yard and carting off tons of soil excavated from the property, as well as the family's trees, bushes, and other plantings.

The excavated land was, long ago, part of Old State Street; however, the Village had formally vacated the street in the mid-1800s. The vacated street was disused, and the Village had permitted building on the property. When the Kruses protested the destruction of their property, the Village authorities responded that they presumed that the Village owned the vacated street (even though it had granted a building permit to the Kruses' predecessors in title to build an extension on what had been the street, and even though the Village was aware of the Kruses' occupancy). The Village had determined to commence a little roadwork across the Kruses' backyard but had not given the owners any notice of its plan to consume their yard as part of a street-widening program.

The Kruses filed a trespass action against the Village in state court seeking to quiet title to the disputed property, to recover monetary damages, and to obtain injunctive relief from the Village's destruction of and continuing trespass on their property. The Village filed a counterclaim alleging that the Kruses had encroached upon and wrongfully taken the property and seeking the removal of the family's home from the property. The Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas granted partial summary judgment to the Kruses, quieting title to the property in them. See Kruse v. Village of Chagrin Falls, Case No. 121335 (Ct. Com. Pls. (Cuyahoga Cty. Ohio) Nov. 3, 1989) (unreported). On appeal, the state appellate court affirmed the grant of summary judgment to the Kruses, holding that the Village had clearly vacated the street in 1863 and that the Kruses, as deed holders of record, were entitled to quiet title of the property. See Kruse v. Village of Chagrin Falls, Case No. 58892, 1991 WL 125343 (Ohio Ct.App. (8th Dist.) July 11, 1991) (unreported). However, the appellate court further held that, because the Village was involved in road maintenance, a governmental function, it was immune from liability from any damage done to the Kruses' property based upon their trespass claim; the court declined to consider whether the complaint raised a constitutional claim. See id. The record indicates that the Ohio Supreme Court declined to accept the case for review. The state courts thus left the matter after quieting title in the Kruses to the property that the Village continues to use, but granting the Kruses neither money damages to compensate them for their loss nor injunctive relief to prevent the Village's continuing trespass on their property.

Because the Village refused to pay compensation for its appropriation of their property, the Kruses filed this lawsuit, seeking relief under 42 U.S.C. Secs. 1983 and 1988 for the Village's violation of their rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Count II of the Kruses' complaint sought monetary relief for severe emotional and mental distress caused by the Village's taking and destroying their property without notice and an opportunity to be heard pursuant to the Ohio state statutes relative to appropriation of private property for municipal use. The Village filed its motion to dismiss the complaint pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1) and (b)(6), arguing that the plaintiffs "did not file an action in state court seeking money damages for Chagrin Falls' alleged taking of their property without just compensation," that "[t]heir trespass action did not constitute an inverse condemnation action" and that "their 'taking' claim is not ripe for federal review."

The district court opined that landowners in Ohio have a remedy for uncompensated takings of property for public use through inverse condemnation proceedings. Relying on Williamson County Regional Planning Comm'n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172, 105 S.Ct. 3108, 87 L.Ed.2d 126 (1985), the court held that "because plaintiffs have failed to avail themselves of the state procedure for recovering just compensation and because they have failed to show that this procedure is inadequate," their constitutional due process and Sec. 1983 claims were premature and, consequently, the court lacked jurisdiction. Since it had dismissed the federal claims, the court declined to exercise pendent jurisdiction over the state-law claim for mental-distress damages, dismissing that claim without prejudice to refiling in state court. This timely appeal followed.

II.

We review de novo the district court's dismissal of claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Kroll v. United States, 58 F.3d 1087, 1090 (6th Cir.1995). The Village argues, and the district court found, that Williamson requires a plaintiff to avail himself of state procedures for obtaining compensation, or to demonstrate that those procedures are inadequate, prior to bringing an action under Sec. 1983, and that the Kruses' claims are not ripe because they did not pursue a state-law cause of action for inverse condemnation. We think, however, that Williamson does not require this result in the case at hand.

The issue in Williamson on which the Supreme Court granted certiorari was "whether Federal, State, and Local governments must pay money damages to a landowner whose property allegedly has been 'taken' temporarily by the application of government regulations." 473 U.S. at 185, 105 S.Ct. at 3115. The Court ultimately held that the property owner's 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 action was not ripe because the property owner had neither obtained a final decision regarding the application of the zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations to the property nor utilized the procedures Tennessee provides for obtaining just compensation. As to the first ground, the Court explained,

Our reluctance to examine taking claims until such a final decision has been made is compelled by the very nature of the inquiry required by the Just Compensation Clause.... [T]his Court consistently has indicated that among the factors of particular significance in the inquiry are the economic impact of the challenged action and the extent to which it interferes with reasonable investment-backed expectations. Those factors simply cannot be evaluated until the administrative agency has arrived at a final, definitive position regarding how it will apply the regulations at issue to the particular land in question.

Id. at 190-91, 105 S.Ct. at 3118-19 (internal citations omitted) (emphasis added).

Second, the Court held that because the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not require pretaking compensation, so long as the state has, at the time of the taking, "a reasonable, certain and adequate provision for obtaining compensation," id. at 194, 105 S.Ct. at 3120 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Blanchette v. Connecticut Gen. Ins. Corps., 419 U.S. 102, 124-25, 95 S.Ct. 335, 349, 42 L.Ed.2d 320 (1974)), the taking is not complete until the state fails to provide adequate compensation. Thus, the Court in Williamson held,

Under Tennessee law, a property owner may bring an inverse condemnation action to obtain just compensation for an alleged taking of property under certain circumstances. Tenn.Code Ann. Sec. 29-16-123 (1980). The statutory scheme for eminent domain proceedings outlines the procedures by which government entities must exercise the right of eminent domain. Secs. 29-16-101 to 29-16-121. The State is prohibited from "enter[ing] upon [condemned land]" until these procedures have been utilized and compensation has been paid the owner, Sec. 29-16-122, but if a government entity does take possession of the land without following the required procedures,

"the owner of such land may petition for a jury of inquest, in which case the same proceedings may be had, as near as may be, as hereinbefore provided; or he may sue for damages in the ordinary way ..." Sec. 29-16-123.

... Respondent has not shown that the inverse condemnation procedure is unavailable or inadequate, and until it has utilized that procedure, its taking claim is premature.

Williamson, 473 U.S. at 196-97, 105 S.Ct. at 3122.

The case before us, however, is not a claim of taking by application of governmental regulation; it is not a case in which the property owner has failed to resort to the administrative procedures which might obviate the need to address the constitutional question; it is not a case in which the state has provided a statutory procedure to obtain post-deprivation compensation. The case before us is a completed...