Appellate Court Overturns Inverse Condemnation Award

In an unpublished followup to an important 2017 ruling, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego has overturned a jury’s decision to award a developer $800,000 in an inverse condemnation case against Coronado. The owners of an historic bungalow in the case never sought a permit from the city’s Historic Resource Commission for their final alteration plan, although they did show the plan to a staff planner for the city. The court concluded that the case was not ripe because the permit was never sought. The court also concluded that the “futility’ exception to the ripeness requirement in an inverse condemnation case also did not apply, again because no permit was ever applied for. The property in question is a 100-year old bungalow in Coronado owned by the J.A. Abbott Trust. In 2014, the Coronado Planning Commission – and, on appeal, the City Council – designated the bungalow as historic even though the city had previously concluded that similar bungalows built by the same builder dating from the same era were not historic. Trustees Arthur and John Young sued to challenge the designation but lost all up the way through the Court of Appeal. “This court's role is not to reweigh evidence, but rather, to determine whether the findings are supported by substantial evidence,” wrote Justice Cynthia Aaron for a unanimous three-judge panel in a 2017 ruling. (CP&DR’s previous coverage of that case can be found here.)

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