Koontz: Could it Get Any Worse?

Just when you thought the Koontz litigation couldn’t get any worse (see my article, Koontz: the Very Worst Takings Decision Ever?),the Florida Court of Appeals has issued a decision in the Koontz case on remand.  The Court split 2 to 1.

To recap, the case arose from the St John’s Water Management District’s denial of a permit to fill wetlands after the plaintiff and the District failed to come to terms on a combination of easement restrictions and off-site mitigation measures that would have allowed the District to issue the requested permit.  The Florida Supreme Court, reversing a decision by the Florida Court of Appeals, ruled that the Nollan/Dolan “exactions” standards do not apply to a permit denial when the government has imposed no “exactions.”  The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that Nollan/Dolan do apply to a permit denial following a landowner’s refusal to accede to a demand for an exaction.

In this latest ruling in the case, on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals reasoned that, since the court’s 2009 decision was “entirely consistent” with the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision, and since the Supreme Court’s  opinion “does not set forth a new legal construct” for analyzing the issues in the case, it should “reaffirm” its prior decision upholding the finding of a taking and a compensation award without the benefit of further briefing.  Given that the Court of Appeals previously awarded “just compensation” for a “taking” of private property, and the Supreme Court subsequently declared that the claim in Koontz was NOT based on a “taking,” the majority’s logic is more than a little suspect. Read on …