In Washington State, the government can utilize the power of “eminent domain” to take, even forcibly, private property owned by an individual. Indeed, the property owner cannot refuse to “sell” when the government properly exercises its eminent domain powers.
There are, of course, parameters around the use of eminent domain to ensure that its exercise is, indeed, proper. The government must show: (1) an adequate public purpose relating to the exercise of their eminent domain powers; and (2) that the government acquires no more property than necessary to meet that public purpose. An owner can potentially successfully challenge a taking under eminent domain powers on these grounds.
Nonetheless, most challenges to governmental eminent domain involve the issue of “just compensation.” The Washington State constitution requires that the government exercising its power of eminent domain provide a property owner with just compensation by putting the owner in the same position financially had that property not been taken. In other words, Washington State must pay the full equivalent value of the property, based on a valuation contemporaneous to the taking – a/k/a – fair market value at the time of taking.
The calculation of the fair market value is tricky because the specter of the pending eminent domain, and the ensuing public project, can itself affect the market value of the property being acquired. A public project could potentially drive up or down the market value of the area in which the property sits and the property itself, which means that the consequences of the act of eminent domain itself could increase or decrease the amount of just compensation.
However, the Washington State Supreme Court has determined that the impact of the eminent domain itself should not play a role in just compensation, and they have disregarded that factor using the Project Influence Rule. The Project Influence Rule states that any increase or decrease of the fair market value to be acquired prior to the date of valuation caused by the public improvement for which that property is being acquired will be disregarded. The public policy behind this appears to protect the government from paying a premium, but it could easily work both ways where a project might drop property values.
The Project Influence Rule itself has some parameters, as most recently seen in the case of Sound Transit v. Lexi, where the Court of Appeals Division One overturned the ruling of the trial court in a case involving the acquisition of a property encumbered by a parking easement. In this case, Sound Transit sought to construct a parking garage near a light rail station and filed an eminent domain petition to acquire property belonging to Lexi, LLC. The trial court applied the Project Influence Rule to value the property as unencumbered by an easement that existed prior to Sound Transit’s announcement of their plans. The trial court had reasoned that Sound Transit’s pre-condemnation activities had made it impossible for Lexi to relocate the easement and minimize the impact on valuation.
The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, concluding that the trial court had misapplied the Project Influence Rule. The Court of Appeals reasoned that while the Project Influence Rule would have led to a result consistent with the trial court’s findings in circumstances where the government’s pre-condemnation (i.e., pre-eminent domain) activities significantly impacted Lexi’s business judgment, that simply did not happen here.
Instead, the Court of Appeals found that Lexi had taken numerous activities prior to condemnation demonstrating a lack of constraint on its business judgment, including developing alternative parking lots. It further determined that Lexi actively chose to relinquish and not exercise its relocation rights – in other words, Lexi had the opportunity to relocate the easement and decidednot to do so. As a result, the activities of Sound Transit and the existence of pending public project did not tie Lexi’s hands with regard to the easement location. Since the Eminent Domain action did not prevent Lexi from relocating the easement, the Court of Appeals ruled that the Project Influence Rule would not result in a disregard of the easement when evaluating the property for just compensation.
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