Fayetteville Map Act plaintiff makes pitch to top NC court

A plaintiff in one of two current Map Act cases at the North Carolina Supreme Court offered arguments this week that the state owes him for multiple infringements of his property rights.

The Map Act enacted in 1987 allowed the North Carolina Department of Transportation to limit development on private property in targeted highway corridors. The state Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that property owners affected by the Map Act could seek compensation for negative impacts on their property rights.

The General Assembly repealed the Map Act in 2019.

The high court agreed in March to take up two ongoing Map Act disputes: Sanders v. NC Department of Transportation and Mata v. NC Department of Transportation.

Plaintiff William Sanders filed his Supreme Court brief Tuesday.

“Here, the parties stipulated that NCDOT took negative easements on Mr. Sanders’ property without just compensation when it recorded the corridor maps for the Fayetteville Outer Loop in 1992 and 2006,” Sanders’ lawyers wrote. “NCDOT subsequently took portions of Mr. Sanders’ property in fee in 2002 and 2010.”

“Mr. Sanders is entitled to just compensation for all of the differing time periods in which different portions of his property were restricted by different Map Act corridors filed at different times,” the court filing added.

“Of the thousands of property owners who suffered unconstitutional takings of their property under the Map Act, Mr. Sanders’ injury was the most extreme, in the amount of land restricted by the Map Act corridors, the duration of the restrictions and the catastrophic damage the restrictions caused,” Sanders’ lawyers argued. “Mr. Sanders’ family land was huge – over 600 acres. It was completely undeveloped farm and woodland.”

“Yet, it was located in the heart of the booming City of Fayetteville and adjacent to Ft. Bragg and was poised to be one of the prize large urban tracts available for development,” the brief continued. “It was frozen by not one, but two map corridors, and the restrictions covered a whopping 113.104 acres. The corridors were situated in such a way that development of the remaining property would have been virtually impossible. The restrictions were first placed on the property in 1992 and the last of the restrictions were not finally lifted until 2016.”

The state Court of Appeals affirmed a trial court ruling that Sanders could pursue a Map Act claim separate from DOT’s payment for land eventually taken for the road project. DOT appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court.

“The practical effects of the decision will be calamitous,” DOT lawyers argued.

In the separate Mata case from Wake County, a split 2-1 Appeals Court decision ordered a trial judge to revisit the amount of money DOT must pay to resolve Map Act disputes in Wake County.

While that could mean less money for plaintiffs than the trial court originally ordered, appellate judges rejected DOT’s argument that Map Act restrictions should be treated as “indefinite” rather than “temporary.” The distinction could lead to significant differences in the amount DOT must pay to resolve outstanding Map Act cases.

The department warned that a lower court ruling in the case could “create confusion” in future Map Act lawsuits. DOT filed a brief Wednesday in the Mata case.

Property owners and the state agency disagree in Mata over whether Map Act takings were temporary or indefinite. The difference could amount to major differences in how much the state must pay to acquire targeted properties.

“The trial court’s ruling that the recission of the corridor maps converted the taking from indefinite to temporary, if allowed to stand, will have a significant impact on all future litigation under the Map Act,” wrote lawyers representing DOT in an Appeals Court petition. “In so ruling, the trial court attempted to distinguish this case from our Supreme Court’s decision in Chappell v. N.C. Dept. of Transportation, which expressly held that a Map Act taking is of indefinite duration.”

The 2020 Chappell case followed up on the Supreme Court’s initial ruling against the Map Act in the 2016 case Kirby v. NC DOT.

“Whether the negative easement taken by the Department was temporary or indefinite is important in this case and all other similar pending and subsequent Map Act cases,” DOT’s lawyers argued.

“Each and every one of the potentially hundreds of remaining Map Act lawsuits will require a determination of before and after value by appraisers for both the landowners and the Department,” the petition continued. “This Court’s guidance as to whether the taking was indefinite, as held by the Supreme Court in Kirby and Chappell, or temporary, as held by the trial court here, will be instrumental in allowing those appraisers to develop their opinions, and in allowing the parties to those lawsuits to evaluate their positions and potentially reach settlements.”

“This Court’s ruling on the duration of the Map Act taking will also have a significant effect on direct condemnation actions involving the same properties on which the Department effected Map Act takings,” DOT lawyers argued. “Should this Court adhere to the Supreme Court’s established precedent from Kirby and Chappell and hold that the taking was indefinite in nature, the reduced rights and value remaining after the Map Act taking will directly affect the value of the property prior to the Department’s ultimate condemnation of the same property for its highway project.”

If a Map Act taking is ruled to be temporary, rather than indefinite, then affected property owners could collect two large payments from DOT for the same land, the petition continued. One payment would address the impact of the Map Act. The other would address the actual taking of the property for highway construction.

“[S]hould this Court accept the invitation to deviate from established precedent and hold that the Map Act taking was temporary in duration and ended in 2016, landowners will presumably argue that the Map Act taking has no effect on the rights held and consequent value of their properties at the time the Department’s direct condemnation actions,” DOT lawyers wrote. “As a practical matter, this result would enable landowners to recover potentially large verdicts in Map Act claims premised on the rental value of their properties over decades of time, followed by a second full recovery for the direct condemnation of the property.”

“Such an outcome would be unjust and inconsistent with this Court’s holding … and the Supreme Court’s holding in Chappell, and this Court should not delay its involvement to uphold its and the Supreme Court’s precedents,” the petition continued.

The John Locke Foundation, which oversees Carolina Journal, submitted friend-of-the-court briefs supporting property owners in the Kirby and Chappell cases.

“Fayetteville Map Act plaintiff makes pitch to top NC court” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.