City of Monterey v. Del Monte Dunes at Monterey (05/24/1999)

By: Eileen Smith, Medill News Service

Questions presented

Whether issues of liability were properly submitted to the jury on Del Monte Dunes regulatory takings claim, (2) whether the Court of Appealsimpermissibly based its decision on a standard that allowed the jury to reweigh the reasonableness of the citys land-use decision, and (3) whether the Court of Appeals erred in assuming that the rough-proportionalitystandard of Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994), applied to this case.

Brief

In the 1980s, Del Monte Dunes, a California land developer, tried in vain to obtain a permit from the city of Monterey to build a residential complex on approximately 37.6 ocean-front acres of ecologically important real estate, once owned by Ponderosa Homes. The city repeatedly denied Del Monte's applications, even though the residential units would have conformed to Monterey's zoning ordinances already in place.

Del Monte Dunes decided to take the city to court in 1986. During the trial, the city pleaded its interests in protecting the environment and ensuring the health of its citizens in rejecting Del Monte's applications for building permits. Many of the city's claims, however, were refuted by Del Monte as essentially groundless.

The district court allowed the suit to be tried before a jury, which received detailed instructions on the land-taking claim, such as the definition of a legitimate public purpose and the regulatory actions of a city, before deliberating.

The jury found that the city had engaged in land-taking by stripping the ocean-front property of any economic viability and causing Del Monte to suffer a notable loss. It also found the Monterey unconstitutionally took of land, without the mandatory just compensation provided for in the Fifth Amendment, and denied Del Monte equal protection under the law. It awarded Del Monte $1.45 million.

The city appealed, arguing that the jury should never have heard Del Monte's case.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals considered whether section 1983 of the federal civil rights statutes or the 7th Amendment of the Constitution guaranteed Del Monte's right to a jury trial, or whether the inverse condemnation action was more akin to an eminent domain proceeding, for which there is no right to a jury trial.

On Sept. 13, 1996, the court held that Del Monte was entitled to a jury trial under section 1983 and that the jury received appropriate instructions. The court noted that the inverse condemnation action allowed for a jury trial even though juries are not permitted when someone sues over a local government's eminent domain to purchase private property, and concluded that the jury was entitled to find that in leaving Del Monte without an economically viable use of the Dunes, the city's actions had effected a taking of property.

The Dunes is now a public park.

The city's petition for certiorari was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 30, 1998.

On May 24, 1999, the Court affirmed the $1.45 million jury verdict. Though the opinion was 5-4 in favor of Del Monte Dunes, three separate opinions were written on the issue of whether and under what circumstances landowners who sue local governments over their land-use regulations are entitled to a jury trial.

Writing for a unanimous Court on two points, Justice Anthony Kennedy found that the jury instructions were not error, and were, in fact, proposed initially by the city of Monterey. The opinion noted that the jury was not given free rein to second-guess the citys land-use policies, but was instructed that the various purposes asserted by the city were legitimate public interests. In so finding, the Court concluded that there the courts were not adopting a new rule of takings law that allows wholesale interference by judge or jury with municipal land-use policies.

As to whether a jury should consider such land-use questions, however, Justice Kennedy wrote for the bare majority of Justices John Paul Stevens, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist that a civil rights case such as this does not necessarily trigger a right to a jury trial. The four concluded, though, that an action such as this in which the government has engaged in a taking without just compensation is an action at law, and because it is fundamentally a factual question, it is a question for ajury under the 7th Amendment's clause that states that in suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, ""the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.""

In the dissenting part of the opinion, Justice David Souter wrote for Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer that Del Monte Dunes had no right to a jury trial either by statute orunder the 7th Amendment.