Arizona Daily Star Interviews Carl Sammartino Regarding Eminent Domain Success for Property Owners

The Arizona Daily Star interviewed me recently regarding my successful representation of multiple property owners whose property the City of Tucson condemned using eminent domain for the Downtown Links project:

‘Whenever there is a large dispute, or a large number of disputes ... it indicates that there was some major disagreement between the government agency and the private property owner regarding the value of the property taken,’ said Carl Sammartino, an attorney who represented several of the affected owners.

Though they were on opposite sides of those disputes, Rossi and Sammartino agreed on the principal cause for the disagreements: The boom in downtown development, which led many owners to believe that their properties were worth more than the city was offering. A quick review of the offer and ultimate settlement figures shows that owners ended up with about 60 percent more than what was originally on the table, according to court documents.
— Woodhouse, Murphy. (2017, September 18). Road Runner: Decades in the making, downtown bypass in sight. Arizona Daily Star, pp. A2, A5.

Please refer to my page of reviews on AVVO to see how my clients felt about the results I obtained for them as their eminent domain lawyer. You can also find the original Arizona Daily Star article here on the Star's website or permanently cached here

RTA Update 2017

In Southern Arizona, The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) is a major source of condemnation cases - cases in which government entities use the power of eminent domain to take private property needed for public-works projects. The RTA plan is a 20-year plan, approved by voters in 2006, that mandates improvements to many roadways in Tucson. 

The RTA had its 10-year anniversary last year, in 2016, marking the halfway point of the RTA plan. What can citizens expect from the next ten years? This map shows which projects remain to be completed:

As you can see, Broadway Boulevard, Silverbell Road, Valencia Road, 22nd Street, Grant Road, 1st Avenue, and Tangerine Road are still slated for major improvements. 

Many property owners who have asked me to represent them when their property has been taken through eminent domain express surprise at how quickly the process moves once the government decides their property is needed for a project. Property owners along these roadways should be prepared for the major disruption that can occur during an eminent domain taking. Having an experienced eminent domain lawyer can help to answer many of the questions that are sure to arise during the process.

Fourth-Quarter 2015 Updates: Broadway Boulevard Widening Project and Relocation Benefits

Moving as a result of eminent domain?

Moving as a result of eminent domain?

As the Broadway Boulevard widening project gets underway, relocation agents working for the City of Tucson have begun to contact property owners along the path of the project. The Broadway widening has languished for many years but, in spite of that, once the relocation agents contact property owners, things start to move towards property acquisition fairly quickly. What should a property owner expect through the relocation process, and how can a property owner ensure he or she receives all of the money to which he or she is entitled through the eminent domain process?

When a government agency like the City of Tucson takes property through eminent domain and the property owner will no longer be able to live or do business at a taken property after the construction of the public improvement, the property owner is generally entitled to two pots of money from the government agency responsible for the taking:

Reach out your hand if your pots be empty / If your pots are full, may they be again.

Reach out your hand if your pots be empty / If your pots are full, may they be again.

Pot A is "Just Compensation" - the amount of money the Arizona Constitution guarantees a property owner in exchange for the real estate taken from him or her.

Pot B is "Relocation Benefits," which is an amount designed to pay for moving the personal property and reestablishing the business or residence of the property owner at a new property the property owner purchases with the funds from Pot A (or other funds the property owner wishes to spend).

If the City of Tucson is taking your property for the Broadway project or any other public improvement, you are certainly entitled to Pot A, and you may be entitled to Pot B funds as well. My practice has traditionally focused exclusively on extracting the most Pot A - Just Compensation funds I could for a property-owner client. Clients usually choose to hire me to seek the most Just Compensation possible and sort out Pot B - Relocation Benefits on their own.

Recently, a shift has occurred, and more clients are asking for help in securing their Relocation Benefits. The reason is those clients believe the relocation agents working for the City of Tucson are not doing a good job guiding the property-owner clients through the relocation process and, instead, seek only to maximize savings to the City of Tucson rather than fairly distributing the Relocation Benefits these clients deserve.

One example of this unfairness is the rules the City of Tucson and its relocation agents use to determine a property owner's eligibility for Relocation Benefits. There are three sources of a property owner's entitlement to Relocation Benefits: a federal source applicable to federal projects and state projects receiving federal funds, a state source applicable to Arizona Department of Transportation Projects, and a state source applicable to all other state- and local-level projects. This last source of Relocation Benefits requires the City of Tucson to establish its own rules governing the distribution of Relocation Benefits, but the City of Tucson has not done so. Instead, the relocation agents representing the City of Tucson use the oftentimes restrictive federal source and the guidelines pertaining to it. This confusion has resulted in clients reporting unfair and bizarre treatment from relocation agents who do not seem to have the appropriate guidance from the city. 

If you believe the City of Tucson or its hired relocation agents are not treating you fairly, call me for a free consultation. I would be more than happy to review the amounts to which you may be entitled and discuss a fair fee to seek the recovery of those amounts. 

Third-Quarter 2015 Updates: State of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA)

As many Tucsonans are aware, the Tucson voters passed the $2.1B Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) plan in May of 2006. Since then, the RTA has been working on delivering 35 roadway  corridor projects that impact Tucson and Pima County property owners. Of these 35 projects, most of them require the implementing agency to acquire private property through eminent domain. 

Here is a list of the 35 roadway corridor projects:

Source: Our Mobility, May 2015 http://www.rtamobility.com/documents/OurMobilityMay2015.pdf

Source: Our Mobility, May 2015 http://www.rtamobility.com/documents/OurMobilityMay2015.pdf

No matter how you quantify it, this is a large public works project, or series of projects. The RTA website does not supply easy-to-understand project status information, so I have distilled the information the site does provide to provide the same list of projects along with each project's (somewhat) current status:

Status of RTA Projects 2015.png

The RTA has completed 9 projects, is currently constructing 6, is designing 11, and is waiting to begin 9 future projects. The 20 projects in-design or for the future (and even some of the projects under construction, like Grant Road) will likely require more condemnation of private property, and those property owners may want to consult an eminent domain attorney to advise them of their rights. 

 

March-April 2015 Updates - Staying Up to Date as an Eminent Domain Lawyer

Finding time to accumulate 15 hours of continuing legal education credit is sometimes harder than it sounds. Many CLE courses are two or three hours only or held in inconvenient locations. Add in the basic aridity common to all work-related seminars, and it is no wonder most lawyers are not overenthusiastic regarding this yearly requirement. 

Fortunately, this need not be so for condemnation lawyers. We have been fortunate to have dedicated eminent domain lawyers throughout the state who are willing to put on a six-and-a-half hour conference packed with focused eminent-domain-specific content. This is known as the Condemnation Summit, held twice a year.

I will be attending the Condemnation Summit on May 15th to make sure I stay on top of the developing trends in eminent domain law. Since it is a conference for right-of-way professionals and appraisers as well as attorneys, it is always a great place to gain a perspective on how all aspects of government takings work. 

City of Tucson Moves Forward with Broadway Boulevard Widening

On October 9, 2014, the Tucson City Council voted 5-2 to approve the recommendation of the Broadway Citizens Task Force and move forward into the design phase of the project for a six lane roadway including two mixed-public-transit lanes. The design phase is planned to take place in 2015 with construction beginning in 2016. 

The current planned alignment, while not final, is available at this previous post

Broadway Boulevard Citizens Task Force Recommends Alignment

The Broadway Boulevard Citizens Task Force (CTF) has recommended an alignment for the widened Broadway Boulevard. The recommendation is to widen Broadway to six lanes with two of those lanes (one each direction) including a mix of public transit and private automobile traffic. This, in the parlance of the CTF, is the "6-Lane Including Transit" alignment.

The CTF's recommendation does not include a definitive statement regarding the final right-of-way width, although CTF documents generated contemporaneously with the recommendation suggest a preference for a final width of 118 feet, which could like something like this:

This is the report analyzing the seemingly preferred 118-foot width versus the seemingly less-prefered 96-foot width. You click the following to see the impact of the 118-foot width on properties along the east and west portions of the corridor.

The CTF will present its recommendation to the Tucson City Council on Thursday, October 9, 2014, time to be determined. The meeting will be open to the public.

The Importance of Expert Witnesses and Lawyers Who Know How to Use Them in Eminent Domain Litigation

A recently decided California case illustrates the vital importance of having the right expert witnesses and lawyers who know how to use them to support a property owner in condemnation litigation. The property owner in San Diego Gas & Electric Company v. Schmidt received a jury award of $8,034,000 - over eleven times the $712,000 the utility company claimed was appropriate.

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was taking a portion of the Schmidts' property to build a transmission line. The taking would split the property, which was vacant land, down the middle. SDG&E's appraiser felt "residential development or habitat mitigation [open space purchasable as an offset to development in other areas]" was the highest and best use of the vacant property. The Schmidts presented a convincing case the highest and best use of the property would be for eventual aggregate mining (aggregate mining is the mining of construction materials like sand a gravel).

The impressive element of the case, and the reason it is noteworthy, is the synergy that the Schmidts' lawyers achieved between two experts - one mining expert, Mr. Warren Coalson (his actual name), and Mr. Orell Anderson, an experienced mining appraiser. It takes some doing to convince a jury that the value of vacant property should reflect its highest-and-best-hypothetical use as a mining operation, but that is exactly what Coalson, Anderson, and the Schmidts' lawyers did.

How did they do it?

The first and most obvious hurdle Schmidt had to clear is one of the oldest tricks in the condemnor's playbook, the "You Could Never Use That Property For Anything" defense: SDG&E claimed county authorities would never permit a mining operation on the Schmidt property, thus the mining value of the property had already been lost long ago when the county instituted mining permit regulations in the 1980s. See? Your property has no value. The government took it away long ago when it decided you could never use your property for anything.

Pima County is notorious for using this tactic - particularly when it comes to the numerous floodplain regulations and prohibitions on construction within watercourses. The City of Tucson likes to use their Major Streets and Routes Plan (which sometimes places desired-future-roadway widths deep into private property) to contend the City already owns most of the frontage around town anyway, so why should the City have to pay for the mere formality of transferring title to itself?

Fortunately, the Schmidts' lawyers were prepared. Coalson had completed a market study of construction aggregates and concluded supply did not match anticipated future demand, making the county likely to permit more mining operations in the near future. Anderson conducted an empirical study of mining permitting in the county and found mining operations had been permitted at a rate of 71.4%, and therefore concluded the likelihood of the Schmidt property being permitted for mining was reasonably probable. First hurdle: cleared. 

The second hurdle Schmidt had to clear was properly valuing a vacant piece of property at its highest-and-best use as a mining operation when few comparable sales of such property existed. Appraisers use three approaches to valuation: the comparable sales approach (find other properties sold recently similar to the subject property and use those sales prices to extrapolate the subject property's value), the cost approach (vacant land value + depreciated cost to reconstruct improvements = subject property's value), and the income approach (present value of income stream realizable from subject property = subject property's value). Since the comparable sales and cost approaches were not feasible, Anderson conducted an income approach.

Using the income approach in eminent domain cases is tricky. First, in California and Arizona, the appraiser should show that the comparable sales approach is not viable for the subject property. Anderson did this. Then the appraiser must avoid two traps the courts prohibit: using estimated business profits as a proxy for income and extracting the value of the land from the profits from a hypothetical sale of the hypothetically developed property. The income approach must reflect value as extrapolated from the income derived from the real estate, not the income derived from the business on the real estate

Presenting a quality opinion of value using the income approach is where the synergy between Coalson and Anderson shone through. First, Coalson testified that mining companies pay landowners a royalty rate on the materials the mining company extracts, which Coalson stated would be 15 percent for the Schmidt property. This was based on Coalson's supply/demand analysis. Coalson also provided a CALTRANS-sponsored study for which Coalson was on the technical review panel that stated the future price for the mined materials would be $15 per ton.

Unlock large jury verdicts with the right expert witnesses and lawyer.

Anderson reduced Coalson's $15 per ton rate to $11 per ton to reflect the uncertainty of securing the proper permits. Anderson then took the 15% royalty rate, $11 per ton, and 2 million ton per year capacity of the Schmidt property and determined the Schmidt property aggregate mine would result in a $3.3 million per year income stream to the property owner. Then, to arrive at a final value, Anderson used an 8.5% discount rate (reduced yet again to account for more uncertainty with the permitting process) to determine the present value of a $3.3 million per year income stream. The final value of the property, or, in other words, what a person would pay for a property with a potential income stream of $3.3 million per year, was $10,359,000. 

The jury believed Coalson and Anderson and found SDG&E must pay $8,034,000 of the $10,359,000 for taking the Schmidts' property. Second hurdle: cleared.

Getting the valuation problem right in an eminent domain case is vital. If you have the right expert witnesses, even the thorniest valuation issues can go very smoothly. However, if your lawyer does not understand what is required or if the expert witness presentation is missing a key piece, the jury can struggle to find its path to a large verdict. San Diego Gas & Electric Company v. Schmidt is a good reminder to check to be sure all of the expert testimony you will present forms a coherent whole that makes it easy for the jury to justify a large award. 

May 2014 Updates

The Arizona Supreme Court handed private property owners a victory in City of Phoenix v. Garretson:

Consistent with our prior cases, we hold that a property owner is entitled to compensation if the government either completely eliminates or substantially impairs the owner’s access to an abutting road and thereby causes the property’s fair market value to decrease. As noted above, however, a landowner who claims or establishes only substantial impairment is not entitled to compensation unless the remaining access is unreasonably circuitous.
— City of Phoenix v. Garretson, Arizona Supreme Court

The Arizona Supreme Court

Arizona law is now crystal clear regarding the complete destruction of access. Before Garretson, lawyers for condemnors had argued that complete destruction of one access point was non-compensable if the property retained other, non-circuitous, and reasonable access to the road network. Garretson prevents condemning authorities from eliminating one point of access completely for a property to a certain road without paying for any devaluation that occurs to the property as a result. 

The facts of Garretson were first related in this space here. And, as suggested here, the Supreme Court essentially affirmed the Court of Appeals, albeit while substituting a Supreme Court opinion for the written opinion of the lower court.

Government lawyers are never nice to anybody.

Attribution: http://xkcd.com/1332/ Under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 2.5 License 

There are three great things about the ruling. First, superior courts, where trial of these cases occurs, now have a clear statement of the law upon which they can base their rulings.

Second, private property owners are entitled to compensation for access restrictions, which most people intuitively perceive as decreasing the value of real estate. (Whether or not this perception is true is sure to be hotly contested.)

Finally, private property owners now are able to bring into being the parade of horribles surely elucidated in the briefs the city and those aligned with the city submitted to the Supreme Court. The fear of the city and those aligned with it, expressed in those briefs, was surely that lawyers defending property owners would push to extend a favorable ruling to try to capture compensation for every destruction of access in a way that would threaten the very existence of a free society as we know it.

This is known as a "slippery slope" argument (see right), and the city and its minions were, to some extent, correct. For instance, I believe this ruling gives rise to a claim for just compensation when temporary complete destruction of access occurs during construction of improvements even if the access will be re-opened once construction is complete. Temporary complete destruction of access occurs frequently. 

Congratulations again to Dale Zeitlin on giving us a great case with which to go forward once more unto the breach. 

The Loop - Can Pima County Condemn Property to Create an Urban Loop Park?

Pima County has almost completed a multi-use path around the City of Tucson the county calls "The Loop." Designed for pedestrians, bicyclists, and all other manner of non-motorized transport, The Loop will certainly be a fun amenity in Tucson once completed. Can the county use its power of eminent domain to take the remaining properties necessary to complete The Loop?

The Loop as of 2014. The tan areas show the portions Pima County has not yet constructed.

The [condemnor] will not be allowed to take the lands of another unless such right comes clearly and unmistakably within the limits of the authority granted. Whatever is not plainly given is to be construed as withheld.
— Orsett/Columbia LP v. Superior Court, 83 P. 3d 608, 611 (Ariz.App 2004)

Surprisingly, the Arizona Revised Statutes do not explicitly authorize a county to condemn private property for a public park. The county's right to exercise the power of eminent domain is derivative of the state's eminent domain powers, and therefore the state must explicitly authorize the county to condemn property for a specific purpose. The state has explicitly granted the power to condemn for public parks to Arizona cities. The closest the statutes come to granting the same power to counties is contained in a general grant enabling the county to use eminent domain for "grounds for any public use of the state." One has to wonder whether such a general grant of authority would suffice to allow a county to condemn private property for use as a public park.

This ambiguous state of affairs may lead the county to adopt different tactics for acquiring properties necessary to complete The Loop. The most above-board tactic, of course, would be for the county to acquire property through a negotiated purchase. The county may attempt more specious tactics, however, which could include requiring a property owner to dedicate property to The Loop as a condition for developing remaining, adjacent property, or including necessary Loop property within a condemnation for a more-clearly-authorized use, such as a drainage project.

The Loop appears to be a laudable public project for the county to pursue, but property owners should be aware of their rights. The law protects private property owners from being saddled with a burden properly borne by the public.