Property Law Developments—Joseph William Singer

A new Nevada statute allows domestic violence victims to move out and terminate any obligations under an existing lease. 2013 Nev. Stat. 301.

In Toftoy v. Rosenwinkel, 983 N.E.2d 463 (Ill. 2012), the court enforced the state right to farm act to prevent a homeowner from suing a neighboring cattle farm for creating a nuisance. The home owner tried to get around the right to farm statute by arguing that the farm was established after the house had been present. But the court focused on the fact that the the tenant had moved out of the house before the farm was established and that only after the farm was in operation did the home owner demolish the house, build a new one, and move in. The court found that the plaintiff had come to the nuisance despite the fact that a house had been on the property before the farm was established and that the purpose of the right to farm law was to codify the “coming to the nuisance” defense to any nuisance claim.

New Hampshire law allows tenancies to be created at-will; that means they can be terminated by either party at any time. When the landlord lost the property through foreclosure, the tenancy ended automatically and no new landlord/tenant relationship was established merely because the tenant kept living on the property. Nor did a state statute that specifically prohibited self-help eviction, N.H. Ev. Stat. §540-A, apply in such a case. Nonetheless, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that summary process was available to evict recover possession of the property and that this available procedure impliedly removed the self-help option. Evans v. J Four Realty, LLC, 62 A.3d 869 (N.H. 2013).

The Idaho Supreme Court endorsed the power of MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) to initiate nonjudicial foreclosure proceedings. Edwards v. Mortg. Elec. Registration Sys. Inc., 300 P.3d 43 (Idaho 2013).The court held that MERS was an agent (nominee) for the actual lender and holder of the beneficial interest in the deed of trust and could act on behalf of its principal. The original deed of trust named Alliance Title as trustee, Lehman Brothers as the lender, and MERS as the beneficiary as nominee for the lender. After MERS substituted a new trustee, the borrower defaulted and the new trustee filed a notice of default to begin foreclosure proceedings. Although the court held that MERS could not be the beneficiary (since no debt was owed to it), MERS could be an agent for the beneficiary (in this case, Lehman Brothers). As agent for the beneficiary, MERS had legal authority to record the notice of default, appoint a new trustee, and initiate foreclosure proceedings.

Kentucky had a law declaring unused traveler’s checks to be abandoned property if they are not used after a period of fifteen years; such property escheated to the state. When the legislature reduced the period from fifteen to seven, the change was challenged as a violation of due process of law. The Sixth Circuit held that the legislation was consistent with the due process clause on the ground that substantive due process requires only that the legislation be rationally related to a legitimate government interest. In this case, the legislation shortening the period from fifteen years to seven was a legitimate revenue-raising measure. American Express Travel Related Services Co. v. Kentucky, 641 F.3d 685 (6th Cir. 2013). The court refused, however, to rule on the question of whether the law effected an unconstitutional taking of property without just compensation, unconstitutionally impaired American Express’s contractual obligations, or was unconstitutionally retroactive in application.

In Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n v. United States, 133 S.Ct. 511 (2012), the Supreme Court unanimously overruled the Federal Circuit decision in Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n v. United States, 637 F.3d 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2011), that had held that deviations by the Army Corps of Engineers from a flood management plan that resulted in temporary flooding of riverfront property did not constitute a taking of property without just compensation but might constitute a tort for which compensation could be sought. The Court held that the mere fact that the flooding was temporary did not immunize the government from a takings claim. Justice Ginsburg’s opinion reaffirmed the Court’s preference for “situation-specific factual inquires” in this area, emphasizing that, with only two narrow exceptions, “no magic formula enables a court to judge, in every case, whether a given government interference with property is a taking.” 133 S.Ct. at 518. Because permanent, government-induced flooding is very likely to constitute a taking, Pumpelly v. Green Bay Co., 80 U.S. 166 (1871), it is also possible that intermittent flooding may constitute a taking if it “interferes with private property,” taking into account whether the flooding was the intended or foreseeable result of government action, the owner’s reasonable, investment-backed expectations, the content of state property law, and the character of the land at issue.

In Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, 133 S.Ct. 2586 (2013), the Supreme Court held that the Nollan/Dolan doctrine applied to monetary exactions as well as mandated dedication of property rights. The governmental body in Florida had proposed to allow an owner to dredge his property on the condition that several exactions were met. They included funding offsite mitigation projects on public lands. The Nollan/Dolan rule requires exactions to be substantially related to the reasons for the permit denial; the state cannot condition a land use permit on actions substantially unrelated to the reasons for the land use regulation. Nollan and Dolan both involved governmental proposals to relax regulatory limits on land development in exchange for the owner granting a public easement of access to portions of the owner’s property. In Koontz, the Supreme Court clarified that this rule of law constituted a particular application of the unconstitutional conditions doctrine and that the doctrine equally applied if the permit condition required monetary payments rather than forced dedication of an easement or land. Because the state law required those building on wetlands to offset the resulting environmental damage, the Koontz ruling requires the mitigation demands to be related to the reasons for the wetlands regulation (the “nexus” requirement) and that they be “roughly proportional” to the harm caused by the proposed development. The Court noted that some states have applied this test in the case of monetary exactions and that developing a workable test was not likely to be difficult.

The Court was divided, however, with four Justices dissenting in an opinion written by Justice Kagan.

The Texas Supreme Court held that a transfer of land to a city with an option to repurchase if the property were ever used for non-park purposes constituted a fee simple subject to condition subsequent and that the right of entry was a property right for purposes of the takings clause and compensable when then city failed to honor the condition. El Dorado Land Co., L.P. v. City of McKinney, 395 S.W.3d 798 (Tex. 2013). The deed provided that the conveyance was “subject to the requirement and restriction that the property shall be used only as a Community Park” and gave the grantor the right to repurchase the property at the price the city paid for it or the current fair market value whichever was less if the property were not used for the designated purpose. Although the repurchase right was called an option to purchase, the Texas Supreme Court interpreted it as a right of entry.  When the city built a library on the property, the grantor sought to exercise the option; when the city did not respond to its demand, the grantor sued claiming the city had taken its right of entry without just compensation, and the high court agreed with its claim. The court remanded to determine whether construction of the library violated the conditions in the grant.

The Ninth Circuit upheld Los Angeles’s Rent Escrow Account Program that enables tenants to pay rent to a public account rather than to the landlord if the landlord fails to repair habitability violations. Sylvia Landfield Trust v. Los Angeles, 2013 WL 4779664 (9th Cir. 2013). The court found that the program served the legitimate government goal of ensuring compliance with regulations ensuring safe and habitable housing for tenants and that the program had adequate procedural safeguards to ensure it was not applied arbitrarily.

Judge Richard J. Sullivan of the Southern District of New York held that owners of digital music have no right to sell that music to others. Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc., 2013 WL 1286134 (S.D.N.Y. 2013). The case involved a company named ReDigi that created a software program that allowed legally-owned digital music files to be transferred by sale from one owner to a buyer in a manner that insured that the file was not retained on the original computer. The service also only allowed this to happen one file or album at a time so that it would not become a general means of selling the same song to multiple buyers. The service was limited to files purchased on iTunes or from another ReDigi user. The goal was to create a market for used digital music files.

The court found that the service resulted in a reproduction of the original file and that this was an unlawful copy within the meaning of the copyright act, as well as a violation of the copyright owners distribution rights and that the use was not a “fair use.” ReDigi had claimed that it was taking advantage of the “first sale” doctrine that allows those who buy a book or CD or DVD to resell it on the secondary market. The court disagreed because the sale of a CD does not involve a copy or a reproduction as is the case with digital files. Whether or not it would be a good idea to allow a secondary market in digital files, the court said, was an issue for Congress that might warrant amendment or modernization of the Copyright Act.