You might not think that the principle of law the Louisiana Court of Appeal (Fourth Circuit) enunciated in Watson Memorial Spiritual Temple of Christ v. Korban, No. 2023-CA-0293 (Dec. 13, 2023) is really in need of enunciating: if the government takes property, the property owner is entitled to just compensation. Entitled, as in the condemnor must pay.
But apparently, that principle isn't all that obvious. At least in Louisiana. As readers of this blog understand, you can get a final judgment for inverse condemnation from a Louisiana court, but the defendant/taker retains the discretion whether to actually pay it, and the usual judgment-enforcement procedures are not available. In short, the "requirement" to pay just compensation is more of a suggestion than an actual requirement.
That's what happened here. Property owners obtained just compensation judgments against the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. The judgment withstood the SWB's appeals. You'd think that would be the end of it, and the SWB would do its duty.
But the Louisiana Constitution says that civil judgments can only be paid if the legislature or the political subdivision has appropriated the funds. And SWB didn't appropriate the funds to satisfy the owners' just compensation judgment. After waiting, the owners filed a federal action asserting the SWB had taken private property without just compensation.
When the federal courts were presented with the issue, they held that the property owners were merely trying to enforce the state court inverse condemnation judgment, and not their self-executing right to just compensation. And even though the state court judgment is an inverse condemnation judgment for just compensation, that makes no difference because federal courts are not in the business of enforcing state court judgments. Thus, the courts held, there's nothing that can be done to force a taker to, you know, actually pay compensation. You just have to rely on the good graces of the takers.
That doesn't seem like what the constitution envisioned. So the property owners/condemnees went back to Louisiana's courts and sought a writ of mandamus and a writ of fieri facias, arguing that the duty to provide compensation for a taking is a ministerial, nondiscretionary duty, and thus a court can order a recalcitrant condemnor to pay up.
The court of appeal framed the issue this way; "[t]his case presents a res nova issue of law: whether payment of an inverse condemnation judgment against a political subdivision is a ministerial duty." Slip op. at 8. And the court held "[w]e find that it is." Id.
Relying on a Louisiana statute that contains language mandating that compensation "shall" be paid within a certain time of the judgment, the court concluded that the duty to pay up is not discretionary (as the SWB argued), but rather a ministerial obligation. This is a "constitutional takings claim involving the mandatory duty to pay just
compensation for deprivation of property rights." Slip op. at 11.
So there you have it. The court reinstated the claims and sent the case back for the lower court to issue the writs.
Although we still continue to believe that we got it right in the federal case and that a local government's failure to pay adjudicated compensation is itself a violation of the Takings Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, we're glad that the property owners here have met with success.
Will the SWB finally do the right thing and pay up? Or will it appeal, and continue to delay? Stay tuned.
Watson Memorial Spiritual Temple of Christ v. Korban, No. 2023-CA-0293 (La. Ct. App. Dec. 13, 2023)
