Ruling could force change in how state builds highways
Published February 18, 2015
by Wes Young, Winston-Salem Journal, February 17, 2015.
In a ruling that could force sweeping changes in how the state builds highways, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the state must pay a group of landowners whose properties are in the designated path of the Northern Beltway, even though work on the parts of the beltway in their neighborhoods could be many years away.
Chief Appeals Court Judge Linda McGee, writing for the three-judge panel, said the N.C. Department of Transportation had “exercised its power of eminent domain when it filed the transportation corridor maps for the Western and Eastern loops” of the Northern Beltway around Winston-Salem.
McGee said that Forsyth Superior Court erred in January 2013 when it declined to hear the 11 landowners’ claims of inverse condemnation.
Inverse condemnation is a term referring to a claim by property owners that the government has in fact taken their property through some regulation, even though it has not formally acquired the land by purchase or condemnation.
The state has bought hundreds of tracts in the path of the beltway, but not those of the 11 landowners and many others filing suit. They have filed lawsuits saying that in designating their properties as being in the path of the beltway, the state has depressed their land values and limited their options to develop or sell to such an extent that the state has in fact taken their lands without payment.
“It confirms what we have been saying from the beginning — that the state was condemning these people and needed to buy them,” said attorney Matthew Bryant, who represents those 11 landowners and many more who have filed similar lawsuits. “The state will now have to pay those people, and they should have bought them out years ago. They should never have gone through this.”
The state routinely designates lands in the path of major road projects as part of a transportation corridor. The state had argued that the designation — allowed by the state’s Map Act — is a planning tool that allows the state to minimize the impact of construction and reduce the cost of building the eventual road.
But the appeals court turned that argument on its head: If the point was to buy property, the court said, the Map Act was a “cost-controlling mechanism” allowing the state to “foreshadow which properties will eventually be taken for roadway projects and in turn, decrease the price the state must pay to obtain those affected parcels.”
Work on the Northern Beltway is going forward now after many years of delay, although only one segment is under construction. A draft road-improvement plan unveiled by the N.C. DOT in December envisions construction on three more beltway segments over the next eight years.
Still, construction on the entire western leg of the beltway remains unfinanced. McGee noted in her ruling that even state officials had said at one point that it could take “60 years” to build out existing urban loops in the state.
Bryant said the 11 property owners have lands in “every corner of the beltway” route. Bryant said he represents a total of 70 landowners in Forsyth County who are in the path of the beltway. Bryant also represents a dozen landowners each in the paths of other roads planned in Cleveland and Cumberland counties, and landowners in Wake, Guilford and Pender counties.
The 11 landowners in Tuesday’s ruling are Everette and Martha Kirby, Harris Triad Homes Inc., the Frances Hendrix estate, Darren Englekemier, Ian Hutagalung, Sylvia Maendl, Steven David Stept, James W. and Phyllis Nelson, and Republic Properties Inc.
Noelle Talley, speaking for the N.C. Attorney General’s Office, said that state attorneys would have to review the ruling and consult with officials in the N.C. DOT before deciding on a response.
Bryant said it is possible that the state could appeal the ruling to the N.C. Supreme Court, but added that he will be ready for that step if it comes.
The N.C. Supreme Court ruled last year that the individual lawsuits against the state could not be combined into one class-action case, saying that each individual landowner’s situation might be different from the others.
February 18, 2015 at 11:34 am
Richard Bunce says:
Good for these judges. Constitutional limits on governments powers must be enforced vigorously. Stop the takings whether directly or indirectly without proving the critical need and providing just compensation.
