SANDERS v. NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

The Supreme Court of North Carolina recently issued an opinion in Sanders v. NCDOT, a case in which we had the opportunity to author an amicus brief at the Court of Appeals level. (You can read our amicus brief here, and the opinion of the Court of Appeals here.)

Sanders stems from North Carolina’s Roadway Corridor Official Map Act, generally referred to as the Map Act. In Kirby v. North Carolina Department of Transportation, the Supreme Court of North Carolina held that restrictions imposed on private property by corridor maps recorded under the Map Act constituted a taking by NCDOT.  As the North Carolina Supreme Court recently noted “While the Map Act remained in effect, ‘once NCDOT file[d] a highway corridor map with the county register of deeds, the Act impose[d] certain restrictions upon property located within the corridor for an indefinite period of time.’ Kirby, 368 N.C. at 849 (citing N.C.G.S. § 136-44.51 (2015)). In general, property located within a corridor map could not be developed or subdivided unless the owners first obtained approval through an administrative process that could drag on for years.” In Sanders, NCDOT recorded corridor maps that covered parts of a tract owned by plaintiff William T. Sanders for the Fayetteville Loop Project. However, subsequent to the Map Act recordations, NCDOT instituted a formal condemnation case against the Mr. Sanders’ property for the project. After a large settlement for that case, the landowner attempted to come back years later and say he still had inverse condemnation claims for Map Act takings on the same property for the same project, in contravention of the applicable North Carolina statute on the subject (and also just of the plain terms of the order resolving the case which clearly indicated that it resolved all claims). The trial court split the baby, denying some aspects of the landowner’s inverse condemnation claim, but allowing much of it to proceed, and the Court of Appeals sustained the ruling of the trial court.

The landowner’s argument stems from a North Carolina statute that can apply to claims for inverse condemnation, N.C.G.S. § 136-111. Both the trial court and the Court of Appeals concluded that the statute of limitations in N.C.G.S. § 136-111 applied to at least some of landowner’s inverse condemnation claims:

Any person whose land or compensable interest therein has been taken by an intentional or unintentional act or omission of the Department of Transportation and no complaint and declaration of taking has been filed by said Department of Transportation may, within 24 months of the date of the taking of the affected property or interest therein or the completion of the project involving the taking, whichever shall occur later, file a complaint in the superior court . . . .

N.C.G.S. § 136-111 (emphasis added). However, the key aspect here is that NCDOT did file complaints and declarations of taking with regard to the subject property. The landowner attempted to argue that because the complaints and declarations of taking were not specifically for the landowner’s Map Act claims, that they did not count for purposes of N.C.G.S. § 136-111.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court of North Carolina accepted NCDOT’s statutory argument that inverse condemnation was not available as a remedy under these circumstances and reversed the Court of Appeals. Both the complaint and the declaration must describe “the entire tract or tracts affected by” the taking. N.C.G.S. § 136-103(b)(2), (c)(2). Therefore, the “affected property or interest therein” was Sanders’ entire property, and not just the specific acquisition areas named in NCDOT’s condemnation actions. As a result, if the landowner had condemnation claims to make with regard to any part of the affected property at that point, he had to make them, and could not bring them up again years after the fact.

We are honored to have been able to participate in this case as authors of an amicus brief. Amicus curiae briefs are particularly common where a case may have broader implications than just to the litigants. Nonprofit entities and professional associations frequently file such briefs, particularly where the implications of the case may impact the entity’s membership. If your entity has any interest in participating in litigation as an amicus curiae, please do reach out.