Lafourche Parish dirt farmer Chad Jarreau has filed a cert petition in conjunction with the Institute for Justice asking the Supreme Court to hear an eminent domain case that Jarreau claims cost his business nearly $165,000.
In a column published by Forbes, Nick Sibilla, of the Institute for Justice, says the case could end the “widespread injustice” of governments not adequately compensating property owners whom they take land from through eminent domain.
The Fifth Amendment only allows eminent domain for “public use,” Sibilla explains in the column, “and if the owner is paid “just compensation.” Traditionally, public use was limited to infrastructure projects like roads and bridges.
That changed in 2005 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that seizing properties with eminent domain could be justified by a “public benefit” like boosting tax revenue. That’s what happened in Jarreau’s case, which dates back to 2011 when the South Lafourche Levee District passed a resolution to “appropriate” land so that it could upgrade and expand levees, as well as remove earth or soil.
Sibilla says almost an acre of Jarreau’s land was caught in this “permanent servitude,” which essentially granted the levee district full control over that part of his property. The agency wasn’t planning to build a levee on part of Jarreau’s land, Sibilla says. Instead, it wanted his dirt. Initially, the Levee District offered Jarreau a mere $1,326.69 for about an
acre of land. He refused, and after Jarreau ignored a subsequent cease and desist letter, the levee district sued him and filed an injunction for him to stop farming dirt on the portion of land tied up in the servitude.
Jarreau initially won, with the trial court ordering the agency to play him an additional $10,542 for the land and $164,705.40 for the dirt the levee district wished to use from his land. Both the appeals court and state Supreme Court overturned the compensation award for the dirt, saying government is not responsible for paying for lose revenue opportunity.
Now the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say.
“Even though this sounds like a basic principle of fairness (and it is), courts are surprisingly split on whether or not the government has to pay entrepreneurs if it destroys their businesses with eminent domain,” he writes. “The Supreme Courts of Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania have all ruled in favor of this form of compensation, while the Louisiana Supreme Court now joins the Federal Circuit and the highest courts in Montana and Wisconsin in opposition. Hearing Jarreau’s case would let the U.S. Supreme Court settle this critical issue.”
The Institute for Justice is a non-profit libertarian public interest law firm headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Read Sibilla’s full column.
