Vorhees v. Naper Aero Club

• Decision Date: 09 November 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-2545,00-2545
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2001) Charles M. Vorhees, as Executor of the Last Will and Testament of Helen Brach, a person presumed dead, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Naper Aero Club, Inc., an Illinois Not-for- Profit Corp.; Naperville Flying Club, Inc., an Illinois Not-for-Profit Corp.; Business Men's Flying Club, Inc., an Illinois Not-for-Profit Corp., et al., Defendants-Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 398

272 F.3d 398 (7th Cir. 2001)

Charles M. Vorhees, as Executor of the Last Will and Testament of Helen Brach, a person presumed dead, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Naper Aero Club, Inc., an Illinois Not-for- Profit Corp.; Naperville Flying Club, Inc., an Illinois Not-for-Profit Corp.; Business Men's Flying Club, Inc., an Illinois Not-for-Profit Corp., et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 00-2545

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Argued March 1, 2001

Decided November 9, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 99 C 6118--James H. Alesia, Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Harlington Wood, Jr., Manion, and Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judges.

Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff Charles M. Vorhees is the executor of the estate of Helen Brach. The Brach estate owns an undivided, one-half interest in a 312-acre farm (the Farm) located in unincorporated DuPage County, Illinois, adjacent to the cities of Naperville and Aurora. Defendant Naper Aero Club, Inc. (Naper Aero) is a not-for-profit flying club that operates a small private airport (the Airport), adjacent to the southern boundary of the Farm. The other five corporate defendants are flying clubs whose members operate aircraft from the Airport; the 52 individual defendants are either owners of the Airport or private pilots alleged to have used the Airport.

Naper Aero maintains two runways at the Airport for takeoffs and landings. One of those runways runs north and south; the north end of the runway abuts the southern boundary of the Farm. As a result of the proximity of the runway to the Farm, aircraft taking off from or landing at this runway necessarily travel across the Farm at very low altitudes.

A predecessor to Naper Aero established the Airport some time around 1956. In the early years, it appears that the Farm and the Airport coexisted harmoniously. The Farm had been used mostly for farming purposes and had remained unimproved. The incoming and outgoing flights did not hinder any of the Farm's activities.

By the late 1980s, things had changed. The cities of Aurora and Naperville were experiencing explosive growth, and the Farm was advantageously situated for commercial use. Vorhees realized that any plans to build high-rise buildings on the Farm, especially near its southern border, would be either impossible or unattractive because of the constant low flights. Wishing to obtain the highest and best use for his property, Vorhees formally demanded that the defendants cease from entering the airspace over the Farm. They refused; two lawsuits resulted.

In 1995, Vorhees brought a suit against the Secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, the Director of the Division of Aeronautics of the Department of Transportation, the City of Naperville, the City of Aurora, the Coun ty of DuPage, and the Naper Aero Club. He based this suit on a 1990 amendment to the Illinois Aeronautics Act that states: "No person may create or construct any airport hazard which obstructs a restricted landing area or residential airport . . . ." 620 ILCS 5/49.1 (West 2001). Vorhees believed that this amendment amounted to a taking of property adjacent to airports; in his case, he argued he was forced to give an implicit air easement, which would limit or eliminate his ability to develop the Farm or sell it for commercial purposes. As a remedy, he asked the court permanently to enjoin the defendants from enforcing the amendment against him and to issue a declaratory judgment stating that the amendment indeed effectuated a taking of private property for which just compensation was due. The district court dismissed the case, ruling that because Vorhees had failed to show that the amendment was preventing him from executing existing plans to develop the land, there was no "actual case or controversy" and the court therefore lacked subject matter jurisdiction. Vorhees v. Brown, 95 CV 3812, 1996 WL 139393 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 26, 1996) (dismissing claim against city of Naperville); 1996 WL 568775 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 27, 1996) (dismissing claims against remaining defendants). In an unpublished opinion, this court affirmed and encouraged Vorhees to attempt development and to commence inverse condemnation proceedings instead. Vorhees v. Brown, 134 F.3d 375, 1998 WL 54657 (7th Cir. Feb. 4, 1998).

Rather than heeding our advice (which he was under no obligation to do), Vorhees filed a second suit in the Chancery Division of the Circuit Court of DuPage County, on August 19, 1999, seeking again permanently to enjoin the defendants from using the north/south runway at the Airport. Vorhees claimed that the injunction was necessary in order for him to obtain full enjoyment of his property and that the pilots' entrance into the airspace above the Farm was a trespass.

Certain defendants immediately filed a motion to remove the case to the federal court for the Northern District of Illinois pursuant to 28 U.S.C. sec. 1441. (The other defendants apparently acquiesced. We note that the removal statute requires all defendants to join in a motion for removal, but in light of our disposition of this appeal, we do not pursue this point further.) The defendants contended that because Vorhees sought to prohibit the use of the runway at the Airport, and because regulation and operation of airports are matters exclusively within the purview of the federal government, federal law preempted state law with respect to all aspects of the complaint. This amounted to the inaptly named "complete" federal preemption, they believed, and they thus relied on original federal question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. sec. 1331 to support their removal petition.

With the case now in federal court as a result of the removal petition, Vorhees filed a motion on October 6, 1999, to remand the case to the Circuit Court of DuPage County pursuant to 28 U.S.C. sec. 1447(c). He took the position that there was no jurisdiction in the federal court, either under sec. 1331 or under sec. 1332. The latter is undisputed; parties on both sides of this case are citizens of Illinois. With respect to sec. 1331, Vorhees argued that Congress, in enacting the Federal Aviation Act, did not intend to occupy the field of aviation so thoroughly as to preclude the application of state trespass laws. While that motion was pending, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), arguing that the district court had no authority to issue an injunction, since under Federal Aviation Regulations, only the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has the authority to limit airflight in navigable airspace.

On May 16, 2000, the district court denied Vorhees's motion to remand and granted the defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint. Vorhees now appeals from both the court's denial of his motion to remand and from the dismissal of the complaint. We review these decisions de novo, accepting all well-pleaded allegations in the complaint as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. See Tylka v. Gerber Prods. Co., 211 F.3d 445, 447 (7th Cir. 2000); Jones v. Simek, 193 F.3d 485, 489 (7th Cir. 1999).

I

Under 28 U.S.C. sec. 1441(a), "any civil action brought in a State court of which the district courts of the United States have original jurisdiction, may be removed by the defendant or the defendants, to the district court of the United States for the district and division embracing the place where such action is pending." As we have already noted, the parties to this lawsuit are not diverse; hence the original jurisdiction necessary for removal, if such jurisdiction exists, must be based on the presence of a federal question. The defendants were able to convince the district court to accept jurisdiction over the case on this basis, contending that the case arose "under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States." 28 U.S.C. sec. 1331.

A case arises under federal law within the meaning of sec. 1331 only when the claim for relief depends in some way on federal law, "unaided by anything alleged in anticipation or avoidance of defenses which it is thought the defendant may interpose." Taylor v. Anderson, 234 U.S. 74, 75-76 (1914). This is the "well- pleaded complaint" rule that every first- year law student learns was established in Louisville & Nashville R.R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U.S. 149 (1908). Under that rule, federal courts may look only to the well-pleaded complaint, and not to any possible or anticipated defenses, to determine if the case arises under federal law. See Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Taylor, 481 U.S. 58, 63 (1987). The complaint Vorhees filed did not invoke any federal law as the basis for his action, nor does his complaint raise any federal issues--at least not consciously or intentionally. It raised only state law claims for trespass and injunctive relief.

Nonetheless, even though plaintiffs are normally the masters of their own cases and can choose which claims they wish to present, there are limits to this discretion. One of those limits arises when federal law has entirely displaced state law. Federal question jurisdiction will be present even if the complaint does not invoke it when "federal law so occupies the field that it is impossible even to frame a claim under state law." Ceres Terminals, Inc. v. Indus. Comm'n of Ill., 53 F.3d 183, 185 (7th Cir. 1995). In such a case, courts sometimes refer critically to the complaint as one that has been "artfully pleaded" to evade the federal claim, see Lehmann v. Brown, 230 F.3d 916, 919 (7th Cir. 2000), although the pleader's intent is not relevant to the jurisdictional issue. Removal to federal court on the basis of federal question jurisdiction, even if the state court would not have had concurrent jurisdiction, is one option available to the defendants. See Bartholet v. Reishauer A.G. (Zurich), 953 F.2d 1073,...