Agenda - Planning Commission - 02/02/2017

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January 10, 2017 I Volume 11 I Issue 1 Zoning Bulletin tion issue, the Strodes' property could be accessed by a railroad underpass and a bridge. In June 2004, the County notified the Strodes that their use of the bridge violated the posted weight. The Strodes claimed that because of the height limit of the railroad underpass and the weight limit of the bridge, they then had to transport bulk amounts from their business in small loads on smaller trucks, resulting in an increased cost of "two to three times more." The Strodes alleged that the City's and the County's actions through "limiting access to their property have substantially diminished the values of [their] land and business enterprises without compensation." The district court found that Randy and Helen's zoning regulation inverse condemnation claims were barred by the statute of limitations. Under Nebraska law, there was a ten-year limitation on the commence- ment of an inverse condemnation proceeding. (Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25- 202.) Also, finding there were no material issues of fact in dispute, and deciding the matter on the law alone, the court issued summary judg- ment in favor of the City and County on the bridge load limit takings claim. The Strodes appealed. DECISION: Judgment of District Court affirmed. The Supreme Court of Nebraska first concluded that both Randy and Helen were barred from bringing their zoning regulation inverse condemnation claims because they failed to bring the claims within the ten-year statute of limitations. As a matter of first impression (i.e., the first time the court ruled on the issue), the court held that a cause of ac- tion for inverse condemnation based on a regulatory taking begins to. accrue "when the injured party has'the right to institute and maintain a lawsuit due to a city's infringement, or an attempt at infringement, of a landowner's legal rights to property." Here, the court found that the Strodes had "the right to institute and maintain a lawsuit against the City for the infringement or attempt at infringement of the legal right to use the property as they wished" when the City acted to implement the zoning ordinance on the property through its 2002 and 2003 notifica- tions of zoning violations to the Strodes. (The statute of limitations did not simply accrue at the time of the zoning regulation enactment in 1998, said the court.) It was at the time Of notifications, noted the court, that "the City's actions had an adverse economic impact on the Strodes' right to use the property in the commercial manner that they wished." Therefore, concluded the court, at the latest, the statute of limitations began to run in June 2003. Since the Strodes filed their inverse condemnation claim more than 10 years later —in September 2013— the claim was untimely and barred by the statute of limitation. The Strodes had argued that the statute of limitations on the zoning regulation inverse condemnation claim did not begin running for Helen 4 ©2017 Thomson Reuters