Prior Owner's Assent Does Not Defeat Inverse Condemnation Claim

Ciaglia v West Long Branch – Inverse Remedy Awarded by Appellate Division

Yesterday, the Appellate Division of New Jersey’s Superior Court reversed a trial court that had dismissed a property owner’s lawsuit alleging that West Long Branch’s zoning regulations amounted to an inverse condemnation of an undersized lot created by a subdivision approved by the Planning Board in 1957.  A full text of the decision may be found here.

While the land use, procedural, and ownership history of the lot was very complicated, the appellate court sifted through the municipality’s procedural objections arising from the long history, and found that a regulatory taking had occurred because the Zoning Board of Adjustment’s recent denial of the property owner’s request for a hardship variance meant that the lot had been zoned into inutility.  This decision was made on appeal, even though the trial court had earlier ruled that a prior owner’s assent to a subdivision in the 1950s creating the undersized lot meant that the hardship was “self-created”.  The appellate court focused upon the impact of the local zoning, not events which had occurred more than 50 years earlier.

The Court therefore remanded for entry of judgment requiring the municipality to commence condemnation proceedings to value the land taken by government regulation.