The law of eminent domain has been the subject of many negative comments over the years, but inspirations for more criticisms never cease coming. Check out, for example, Prout v. Cal DOT, 2018 Cal App unpub. LEXIS 8523. It’s discussed in detail in Brad Kuhn’s blog on California Eminent Domain. Check it out if you want to see how the court pulled a rabbit out of DOT’s empty hat.
Prout, an unpublished case, holds that where the government required a dedication (exaction) as a permit issuance condition, its failure to accept the dedication when it was duly offered (but invoking the dedication requirement only when, 20 years later, when it decided to take some of the owner’s land for a highway improvement), was hunky dory, even though — to make this stew more piquant — the dedication requirement was illegal to begin with because there was no nexus between it and the owner’s private project. When the owner then objected to DOT’s belated attempt to use of the dedication requirement (because it was never accepted) the California Court of Appeal ruled against him. But what about the law’s acceptance requirement? Picky, picky, held the court. Even though the law requires acceptance of the dedication offer, and here there was none, the acceptance was deemed performed, not by anything DOT did, but “by implication” when the owner went ahead with his project.
We have no intention of parsing the whole Prout megillah — we leave that to a maven like Mr. Kuhn. But however sliced, this is still a head shaker. The government got to enjoy the benefit of a dedication acceptance, even though there was none, and the dedication requirement was substantively illegal. As far as we can tell, the court did not explain what purpose the dedication offer cum acceptance serves when its absence makes no difference.