A friend sent us the new opinion of the Florida District Court of Appeal (5th District) in Town of Ponce Inlet v. Pacetta, LLC, Case No. 5D14-4520, filed June 16, 2017. Though probably unintended, this opinion provides an excellent example of what is wrong with regulatory taking law, and reveals that courts can be either incompetent or not acting in good faith when they decide these cases. Here is the opening paragraph of the Pacetta opinion:
“The parties in this case make their third appearance before the court. In this appeal, the town of Ponce Inlet (“Town”) appeals a multi-million-dollar second amended final judgment entered following a jury trial on damages arising from an inverse condemnation claim as well as an earlier order resulting from a bench trial on liability (“liability order”) that found in favor of the Appellees . . .”
So after three trials and opinions by judge and jury, and after three appeals you’d think that courts acting with minimal competence and in good faith would get the issue of liability right Yes? No.
We won’t go through the whole history of this litigation; you should read the opinion if you want to get into the whole megillah. Suffice it say here that this opinion ends with holding against the property owners on their Lucas — complete taking theory — and remands the case to the trial court for yet another trial on liability, and damages (if appropriate). Which seems to us as a deliberate judicial strategy to exhaust the property owner and deplete his resources without ever reaching the elusive “real” merits of the controversy. Legal tradition admonishes lawyers to respect judicial decisions, but this . . .?
A while back your faithful servant wrote an article entitled Hunting the Snark, Not the Quark: Has the U.S. Supreme Court Been Competent in its Effort to Formulate Coherent Regulatory Takings Law? 30 Urban Lawyer307 (Spring 1998). With a title like that you can probably guess that our answer was “No!” But dig it up anyway and read it (or re-read it as the case may be) and see for yourself that our negative assessment of the court’s handiwork in this field rested, and still does, on a sound foundation. It is increasingly apparent that things have gone beyond mere judicial incompetence, and it is increasingly proper to question the judicial good faith in these controversies — if that term may be properly used.
Now, almost two decades later it has become all too clear that the evident judicial rationale in these controversies is frequently not a resolution of legal disputes, but rather the creation of a spider-web-like labirynth in which to trap constitutionally aggrieved, faultless property owners whose “sin” is a desire to use their seemingly constitutionally protected property for socially constructive purposes, like creating badly needed housing. They get taxed on its value for its highest and best use, but as it turns out they can’t use it at all for any economically rational purpose.
And this isn’t just our opinion. Check out the torrent of invective pouring out from the scholarly community, that characterizes judicial performance in this area of law as including characterizations ranging from “worse than chaos” to “deceptive” and “absurd,” uttered by commentators on both sides of the issue. See 36 Urban Lawywr at 702-703.
Legal tradition calls for respecting judicial decisions. But respect has to be earned.