This page uses extracted PDF text. Text can misread numbers, dates or table columns. Check the PDF before quoting or interpreting it. Redacted areas remain redacted.
the state, and is not a taking of private property for a public use in the sense contemplated
by the Constitution, for which compensation must be allowed.”); State Highway and
Transp. Comm’r v. Linsly, 290 S.E.2d 834, 837 (Va. 1982) (similar). Said another way,
nuisance abatement under the police power does not trigger a constitutional right to just
compensation. See Stickley v. Givens, 11 S.E.2d 631, 638 (Va. 1940).
B.
With these principles in mind, we address Fox’s two related challenges to the district
court’s grant of summary judgment for the city on the inverse condemnation claim. First,
he argues that a jury must decide whether the house at 615 Walker Avenue constituted a
nuisance. Second, he argues that a jury must decide whether the city acted pretextually in
claiming that it demolished the house to eliminate blight or abate a nuisance.
Beginning with whether a jury must decide if the house constituted a nuisance, Fox
is wrong for two reasons. First off, Fox never appealed the city’s determination that the
house constituted a nuisance. That failure to exhaust administrative remedies bars him from
challenging the nuisance determination thereafter. See Lee v. City of Norfolk, 706 S.E.2d
330, 337–38 (Va. 2011).
Second, aside from his exhaustion problem, whether Fox’s property was a nuisance
under Virginia law is not a material issue in this case. Fox’s claim fails whether or not the
house was a nuisance. What if the house was a nuisance? Then the city properly abated it
without compensation under its police power. See Stickley, 11 S.E.2d at 638; Lee, 706
S.E.2d at 338. In that situation, Fox cannot sustain an inverse condemnation claim because
the city never “took” property in the eminent domain sense. See Lee, 706 S.E.2d at 338.
13Jump to an indexed page (18 of 18)