Lucas v.
Supreme
Court of the
505
Johnson,
pp. 850-857
Facts: Lucas bought some beachfront
property on an island for $975,000 in order to build a residential
development. Two years later, the
Issue: Did the law’s effect on the
economic value of Lucas’s land constitute a “taking” under the Fifth and
Fourteenth Amendments requiring “just compensation”?
Rule: NEW RULE! When the state deprives a property owner of
100% of the economic value of their land for some public purpose, it is a compensable
taking unless the use that is being taken away was never part of the title to
the land in the first place. For
example, it’s not a taking to deprive the owner of the right to create a
nuisance on their land, because that wasn’t part of their property rights
anyway.
Analysis: The Court says that there
are two clear-cut cases of regulatory “takings”:
1. Physical occupation of
private property
2. Denial of all economically
productive use of private property
This
case falls into the latter category. The
Court acknowledges that there are occasions when it will allow such regulation
to fall short of a compensable taking.
The only time that happens is if, in effect, the state takes away
something the landowner never had in the first place.
It
is reasonable for property owners to expect that their property will be
restricted in some ways. One way to look
at this is to say that certain implied limitations “inhere” in the title to the
land. The government doesn’t need to
compensate for making explicit limitations
that were previously implicit.
The
Court says that in order for
Conclusion: The judgment of the South
Carolina Supreme Court is reversed and the case is remanded.