Real Estate & Property Law

California Court gets it right

By Alan Ackerman

Metropolitan News-Enterprise

A public entity's failure to specify—in the resolution of necessity—the public use to which property taken by eminent domain is to be put cannot be cured by putting the land to public use after it is taken, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled Friday.

The justices faulted the City of Stockton for the manner in which it took two parcels on the North Shore of the Stockton Deep Water Channel as part of a plan to develop a multi-use complex, including an arena and minor league baseball park.

They reversed a final judgment and awarded litigation expenses to the former owner, Marina Towers LLC. But they concluded that it would be equitable to allow the city to pass a new resolution of necessity.

All too frequently, governmental authorities self perpetuate the thought that they do not have to rely upon a statutory delegation in order to condemn property. The California courts got it right in this case.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on March 04, 2009 (boomark / email).