Most of the more than 800 property owners potentially affected by a lawsuit challenging use of the state Map Act in Winston-Salem will not benefit from any victory for plaintiffs in the case.
A 5-2 ruling from the N.C. Supreme Court Friday upheld a lower court’s ruling denying “class certification” in the case. That means only the original plaintiffs in the case — four individuals, a couple, and two businesses — will be allowed to proceed with the suit when it heads back to Forsyth County Superior Court.
Dissenting justices Paul Newby and Mark Martin argued that the original 2011 trial court ruling in the case relied on the wrong legal analysis in denying class certification. The dissenters argued that the trial judge should consider that issue again.
Plaintiffs contest the N.C. Department of Transportation’s use of the Map Act to limit development of property targeted for Winston-Salem’s Northern Beltway. First recorded in 1997 and amended in 2008, official “corridor maps” for that project limit building permits and approval of new subdivisions on affected properties.
N.C. DOT has purchased more than 450 properties for the highway project, but a federal court order blocked any action on the properties from 1999 to 2010. Since 2010 the state has purchased at least six properties.
Plaintiffs filed suit in September 2010 in the case now known as Beroth Oil Co. v. NCDOT. They contend DOT’s actions in continuing to limit development within the highway corridor “have placed a ‘cloud’ upon all real property in the Northern Beltway by ‘destroying and nullifying [the] properties’ value,” according to a quotation of plaintiffs’ legal arguments in Justice Barbara Jackson’s majority opinion. The suit contends the state’s “conduct constitutes a taking of their properties without just compensation.”
While arguing against the DOT’s continued use of Map Act restrictions, plaintiffs proposed extending their case to more than 800 property owners within the Northern Beltway.
Jackson and four colleagues agreed with the trial court and a unanimous three-judge panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals that the plaintiffs had not met the legal standard to proceed with a class-action suit.
“We acknowledge that some property owners have suffered significant adverse effects as a result of the filing of the corridor maps and the long delay in any subsequent action by NCDOT,” Jackson wrote. “Nevertheless, plaintiffs have not shown that all 800 owners within the corridor are affected in the same way and to the same extent.”
The high court’s majority ruled against the trial court and Appeals Court on the merits of the original plaintiffs’ claims against N.C. DOT. The case will head back to Forsyth County Superior Court to address those claims.
Newby and Martin argued the trial court should have used a different standard to determine whether the suit could proceed with class-action status affecting the additional hundreds of property owners. “[T]he trial court should have weighed whether plaintiffs collectively alleged a common substantial interference with certain property rights of all owners in the Northern Beltway corridor and whether that issue predominates,” Newby wrote.
Unlike the Supreme Court’s majority, Newby and Martin did not buy the argument that each case would be too distinct to join them together in one suit.
“Regardless of the past, present, or planned use of each parcel, certain rights to improve and sell associated with each allegedly have been impaired in the same manner by the same uniform restrictions,” Newby wrote. “The monetary values eventually placed on the rights to improve and sell property do not affect the core question of whether the owners may still exercise those rights. … If one owner suffered a taking of certain fundamental property rights based upon the corridor maps’ blanket restrictions, all owners suffered a taking.”
The Winston-Salem Northern Beltway project served as the “poster child” for a March John Locke Foundation Spotlight report calling for reform of the state’s Map Act.
Pointing to 17 years of restrictions tied to the Winston-Salem corridor maps, the JLF report recommended repeal of North Carolina’s Map Act. Only 13 states have map acts, and North Carolina’s is one of the nation’s most restrictive versions.
If state lawmakers reject outright repeal of the Map Act, the JLF report recommended new time limits for Map Act development restrictions and clearer rules restraining the governments that acquire property for Map Act projects.
Mitch Kokai is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.