NY App Div: Potential Future Public Benefit Won't Support Eminent Domain

It can be somewhat of a challenge to blog about many of the opinions from New York's appellate courts (dun-dun) because they are typically short. What more (or less!) can you say about an opinion that is very short? We mean really short. Like 3 pages short.

Such it is with the Appellate Division's opinion in Gabe Realty Corp. v. City of White Plains, No. D66651 (June 30, 2021). A total of 4 pages, actually, but when you cut out the caption, introductory fluff, and the clerk's signature, you are down to a grand total of two pages of single-spaced text. It would take us more time to write about the decision than it would take you to just read the darn thing.

Highlights:

• A New York court invalidates an urban renewal taking, supported by a claim of blight remediation. Read that again: this is from a New York court, perhaps the worst system in the nation in which to try and challenge a taking.
• "Here, however, the agency relies only on conclusory assertions of blight based upon a 25-year-old urban renewal plan which itself lacks detail or documentation."
• "This Court will not act as a mere 'rubber stamp[ ]' to approve findings of blight where the condemning authority has failed to provide evidence to support its findings."
• "Here, the agency’s “bare pleading” (id. at 484) of substandard conditions did not satisfy its obligation to respond to a challenge to its finding of blight by presenting 'an adequate basis' for its conclusion."
• "Where a condemning authority does not demonstrate that property is substandard for the purpose of urban renewal, the authority must identify some public purpose other than the purported remediation of blight."
• "A mere potential future public benefit is not sufficient to satisfy the requirement that property be taken only for public benefit."
• "We agree with the Federal Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit that the existence of a 'public use' must be determined at the time of the taking since the requirement of public use would otherwise be rendered meaningless by bringing 'speculative future public benefits' which might never be realized within its scope."

So go read it!

Gabe Realty Corp. v. City of White Plains, No. D66651 (N.Y. App. Div. June 30, 2021)