St. Johns River Water Management v. Koontz

• Decision Date: 09 January 2009
• Docket Number: No. 5D06-1116.,5D06-1116.
• Citation: 5 So.3d 8
• Parties: ST. JOHNS RIVER WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT, Appellant, v. Coy A. KOONTZ, Jr., etc., Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

5 So.3d 8

ST. JOHNS RIVER WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT, Appellant, v. Coy A. KOONTZ, Jr., etc., Appellee.

No. 5D06-1116.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.

January 9, 2009.

Order Granting Motion for Clarification March 20, 2009.

Rehearing Denied March 20, 2009.

William H. Congdon, Palatka, for Appellant.

Christopher V. Carlyle, Shannon McLin Carlyle and Gilbert S. Goshorn, Jr., of The Carlyle Appellate Law Firm, The Villages, and Michael D. Jones, of Michael D. Jones & Associates, P.A., Winter Springs, for Appellee.

TORPY, J.

St. Johns River Water Management District ["the District"] appeals the trial court's final judgment awarding Coy A. Koontz, Jr., as personal representative of the Estate of Coy A. Koontz, Sr., compensation for the District's temporary taking of Coy A. Koontz, Sr.'s ["Mr. Koontz"] property. This is the fourth time that this case has been appealed to this Court. See Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Mgmt. Dist., 720 So.2d 560 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) ["Koontz I"]; St. Johns River Water Mgmt. Dist. v. Koontz, 861 So.2d 1267 (Fla. 5th DCA 2003) ["Koontz II"]; St. Johns River Water Mgmt. Dist. v. Koontz, 908 So.2d 518 (Fla. 5th DCA 2005) ["Koontz III"]. We affirm.

This case involves a landowner, Mr. Koontz, who, in 1994, requested permits from the District so that he could develop a greater portion of his commercial property than was authorized by existing regulation. The District replied that it would approve the permits only if Mr. Koontz agreed to satisfy certain conditions, one of which was the performance of "off-site" mitigation involving property a considerable distance from Mr. Koontz's property. Mr. Koontz contended that the conditions were unreasonable and rejected the offer. The District then denied the permits. Based on the permit denial, Mr. Koontz brought an inverse condemnation claim asserting an improper "exaction" by the District.¹

In the most general sense, an "exaction" is a condition sought by a governmental entity in exchange for its authorization to allow some use of land that the government has otherwise restricted.² Even though the government may have the authority to deny a proposed use outright, under the exactions theory of takings jurisprudence, it may not attach arbitrary conditions to issuance of a permit. See Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374, 397, 114 S.Ct. 2309, 129 L.Ed.2d 304 (1994) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (acknowledging correctness in majority's conclusion that arbitrary conditions may not be imposed even when government has authority to deny permit).

In relating the circumstances giving rise to this case, the trial court explained:

The subject property is located south of State Road 50, immediately east of the eastern extension of the East-West Expressway in Orange County. The original plaintiff, Coy Koontz, has owned the subject property since 1972. In 1987, a portion of the original acreage adjacent to Highway 50 was condemned, leaving Mr. Koontz with 14.2 acres. There is a 100-foot wide transmission line easement of Florida Power Corporation running parallel to and about 300 feet south of Highway 50, that is kept cleared and mowed by Florida Power. A 60-foot wide drainage ditch runs north and south on the west boundary of the property.

The portion of the site that is proposed for development has been seriously degraded from its condition in 1972, by all of the activity around it. There has been intense development in the vicinity, both residential and commercial, and road construction and other governmental projects. The site's usefulness as an animal habitat has been severely reduced.

All but approximately 1.4 acres of the tract lies within a Riparian Habitat Protection Zone (RHPZ) of the Econlockhatchee River Hydrological Basin and is subject to jurisdiction of the St. Johns River Water Management District.

In 1994, Koontz sought approval from the District for a 3.7 acre development area adjacent to Highway 50, of which 3.4 acres were wetlands and .3 acres were uplands.

In his concurring opinion in Koontz II, Judge Pleus explained the positions taken by the parties during the permit approval process:

Koontz proposed to develop 3.7 acres closest to Highway 50, back to and including the power line easement. In order to develop his property, he sought a management and storage of surface waters permit to dredge three and one quarter acres of wetlands. A staffer from St. Johns agreed to recommend approval if Koontz would deed the remaining portion of his property into a conservation area and perform offsite mitigation by either replacing culverts four and one-half miles southeast of his property or plug certain drainage canals on other property some seven miles away. Alternatively, St. Johns demanded that Koontz reduce his development to one acre and turn the remaining 14 acres into a deed-restricted conservation area. Koontz agreed to deed his excess property into conservation status but refused St. Johns' demands for offsite mitigation or reduction of his development from three and seven-tenths acres to one acre. Consequently, St. Johns denied his permit applications.

Id. at 1269 (Pleus, J., concurring specially). In its orders denying the permits, the District said that Mr. Koontz's proposed development would adversely impact Riparian Habitat Protection Zone ["RHPZ"] fish and wildlife, and that the purpose of the mitigation was to offset that impact.

After hearing conflicting evidence, the trial court concluded that the District had effected a taking of Mr. Koontz's property and awarded damages. In reaching this conclusion, the trial court applied the constitutional standards enunciated by the Supreme Court in Nollan and Dolan. In Nollan, with respect to discretionary decisions to issue permits, the Supreme Court held that the government could impose a condition on the issuance of the permit without effecting a taking requiring just compensation if the condition "serves the same governmental purpose as the developmental ban." 483 U.S. at 837, 107 S.Ct. 3141. This test is referred to as the "essential nexus" test. In Dolan, the Court added the requirement that, for such a condition to be constitutional, there must also be a "rough proportionality" between the condition and the impact of the proposed development. 512 U.S. at 390-91, 114 S.Ct. 2309.

Here, the trial court determined that the off-site mitigation imposed by the District had no essential nexus to the development restrictions already in place on the Koontz property and was not roughly proportional to the relief requested by Mr. Koontz. The District makes no challenge to the evidentiary foundation for these factual findings. Instead, it advances arguments directed to the trial court's jurisdiction and the legal viability of Mr. Koontz's claim. The District argues that the lower court never had subject matter jurisdiction to hear Mr. Koontz's claim because section 373.617(2), Florida Statutes, the statute under which Mr. Koontz maintained his claim, expressly limits the scope of circuit court review to cases in which a constitutional taking is proven. It argues that Mr. Koontz's claim is really a challenge to the merits of the permit denial, which it contends may only be pursued in an administrative proceeding. Although the District acknowledges that an exaction claim is a form of takings claim, and is thus cognizable under the statute, it argues that no such exaction occurred here because nothing was exacted from Mr. Koontz. This argument, although couched in terms of jurisdiction, really addresses itself to whether an exaction claim is cognizable when, as here, the land owner refuses to agree to an improper request from the government resulting in the denial of the permit. This is a question that has evoked considerable debate among academics and is the primary point of the dissent.³

Despite the ongoing debate, we conclude that this question has already been answered in Dolan itself, which also involved a challenge to rejected conditions. Although the Dolan majority did not expressly address the issue, the precise argument was addressed by the dissent and, thus, implicitly rejected by the majority. Dolan, 512 U.S. at 408, 114 S.Ct. 2309 (Stevens, J., dissenting). The argument was also directly addressed and rejected in Parks v. Watson, 716 F.2d 646 (9th Cir. 1983), a case upon which the Supreme Court relied in deciding Nollan. See Goss v. City of Little Rock, 90 F.3d 306, 309-10 (8th Cir.1996) (Dolan applicable when owner alleges he refused permit predicated upon unlawful condition; case remanded for further proceedings); Town of Flower Mound v. Stafford Estates Ltd. P'ship, 135 S.W.3d 620, 625 (Tex.2004) ("any requirement that a developer provide[s] or do[es] something as a condition to receiving municipal approval is an exaction."); Salt Lake County v. Bd. of Educ. of Granite Sch. Dist., 808 P.2d 1056, 1058 (Utah 1991) (exactions include land dedications or payment of fees as condition for issuance of permit).⁴

The District also contends that an action does not lie here because the condition it imposed did not involve a physical dedication of land but instead a requirement that Mr. Koontz expend money to improve land belonging to the District. Again, we conclude that the Supreme Court has already implicitly decided this issue. In Ehrlich v. City of Culver City, 512 U.S. 1231, 114 S.Ct. 2731, 129 L.Ed.2d 854 (1994), the city conditioned a permit on the payment of money to build tennis courts and purchase artwork. Although the state appellate court upheld the imposition of the conditions, the Supreme Court vacated the decision and remanded the case to the state court to reexamine it in light of Dolan. Absent a more definitive pronouncement from our high court on this issue, we conclude that the distinction advanced by the District is not legally significant. See Mark Fenster, Takings Formalism and Regulatory Formulas: Exactions and the Consequences of...