Major Victory in Ann Arbor Sewer Cases
The City of Ann Arbor initiated ten cases seeking to acquire sewer easements from residential properties. I represented the owners of seven single family homes, two duplexes, and one small apartment building. The City’s good faith offers for these cases totaled $50,725.
The easement included a number of provisions that the City’s appraiser failed to properly evaluate. For example, the easement allowed all trees located within it to be removed. However, the City claimed that only selected trees would be removed. This position violated the rule requiring the assumption that “newly acquired property rights will be used to the fullest extent allowed by law.” M Civ JI 90.12 Partial Taking. The loss of these trees caused significant harm to the properties since the easement impacted a natural gully that was an aesthetic amenity while removing buffering from neighboring properties and a busy road. It also prevented the property owners from planting anything other than grass. The easement allowed the creation of a permanent construction pathway through the backyards, including the right to grade the natural, uneven landscape to construct it. It opened the backyards to trespassers, where before the taking the terrain was both uneven and blocked by vegetation. The easement allowed construction of unsightly above ground features, which was exacerbated by the inability to screen them with vegetation. The easement also allowed grading and excavation that could harm trees outside but bordering the impacted area.
The City’s appraiser ignored these issues. He asserted that the presence of trees did not contribute to value. In doing so, he ignored the City’s own publicly stated position. The City justified ordinances that prevented the property owners from clearcutting the area by identifying the positive impact of trees on residential home values. Apparently, nobody from the City told their own appraiser that his position contradicted the City’s. The City’s appraiser did not evaluate the impact of the taking on sales in the neighborhood, where several sales after the announcement of the project demonstrated lower than anticipated prices due to the anticipation of the project. After I revealed these deficiencies during deposition, the City settled. It paid an aggregate of $1,195,976, nearly 24 times what it had offered. This amount included substantially increased just compensation, statutory interest, reimbursement of the entire contingent attorney fee, and payment of all the owners’ expert expenses.
These cases demonstrate why retention of counsel with experience representing owners is necessary. During discovery, the City produced records identifying the amounts that property owners who did not hire counsel received for conveying equivalent easements. Those property owners received a pittance compared to what their neighbors obtained after hiring me. Simply put, property owners cannot rely upon appraisals undertaken by agencies if those appraisals do not evaluate the impacts of the taking using the appropriate legal standards. In additon, property owners are not in a position to know whether those legal standards have been followed without legal advice.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or are facing a taking of your own.