Condemning Property: Reaction, Policies Vary

The suicide of Japanese farmer Masao Fujishige cast light on a centuries-old issue that is very much alive in Orange County’s continuing transformation from rural to urban--the taking of land.

Beset by poor health and reportedly despondent over the Anaheim City Council’s recent vote to condemn part of his farm, Fujishige shot himself to death in his living room Wednesday evening.

“People not willing to sell at any price is common,” said attorney J. David Pittman, who often represents landowners in condemnation disputes with government agencies. “I’m not really surprised that a farmer would kill himself over an almost certain loss of his family property.”

Holdouts Rarely Win

It is an almost certain loss, Pittman said, because holdouts rarely win in court.

“The government has virtually an absolute right to take it (land),” he said. “It’s not something you have any real defense to. The original concept was to take land for a public use such as a highway, but that is no longer the case.

“The concept is now that almost any public benefit can be used as justification, including improvement of local tax revenues.”

Pittman said he recently represented a Fullerton man who lost a lengthy battle to preserve the site of his home and business--land he had held for 35 years. Now, a membership discount warehouse outlet sits on the site as part of Fullerton’s redevelopment effort.

“Price was not the issue with him,” Pittman said. “He simply did not want to move.”

Despite community protests, Fullerton also recently razed the site where Leo Fender created his now-famous electric guitars to make room for the city’s new transportation center. The last occupant was a potter who was evicted and had refused to move his belongings.

A Different Story

But the story is different 12 miles across the county in Huntington Beach.

There, city officials have done little to help a developer whose $25-million luxury housing development for senior citizens, a convalescent hospital and retail shops have been stymied by one holdout--an elderly man concerned about where he will live and retain access to a small fleet of cars and recreational vehicles stored at his home near Lake Street and Atlanta Avenue.

Indeed, different cities have varying philosophies about condemning private land. Fullerton, Anaheim and Santa Ana are considered to be among the most aggressive in the county when it comes to taking land for public purposes. Huntington Beach is one of the cities less prone to use condemnation in its strategy for community improvement.

In the case of the luxury senior citizens project, politics has also played a role. According to City Atty. Gail Hutton, several City Council members have been reluctant to use the power of eminent domain for a project that they don’t necessarily like.

Still, Hutton said, the case is an example of Huntington Beach’s philosophical opposition to the use of condemnation proceedings in all but the most serious circumstances.

“We’ve had a very conservative attitude about property rights in Huntington Beach,” Hutton said. “They’re considered very special. . . . I, myself, come from strong farming stock in North Dakota, and I know that I would feel the same way as the farmer who committed suicide in Anaheim. The land is part of our being. The fact that he killed himself doesn’t totally shock me.”

Different in Japan

Hutton said she visited Japan last spring and discovered that the taking of land is handled very differently there.

“Officials in the city of Anjo told me we do it very harshly in America,” Hutton related. “They said they never go to court to condemn property. But I asked them, then, what do you do when there’s a holdout? Don’t people try to prolong it so they can get more money for their property? And they said that never happens. . . . They visit the family every night until the family is persuaded that giving up the land is the right thing to do for the people as a whole.”

In Orange County, there has been a dramatic shift from condemnation of rural land for streets and public buildings 20 years ago to the seizure of already-developed land for street widenings and redevelopment of downtown business districts.

In 1946, 54% of the county’s acreage was devoted to farming and ranching. By 1980, the figure had plunged to 5.7%, even though more than a third of the county’s 267,000 acres remained undeveloped--most of it in south Orange County and the Cleveland National Forest.

Laws Are Changing

Meanwhile, laws affecting the taking of land have been evolving as rapidly as the county has urbanized.

For example, last year the California Supreme Court ruled that agencies must pay market-rate interest when they take people’s property, a major financial setback for city redevelopment agencies. The decision erased a law allowing interest payments at far less than the going rate. When an agency files a condemnation suit, it deposits money in a trust account and pays interest on the amount. Displaced property owners receive the money, plus interest, after a court determines the property’s value--a process that takes years.

Appraisers are usually hired by both sides to arrive at the property’s market value.

In earlier decisions, courts ruled that property owners are entitled to more than relocation costs and are entitled to reimbursement for subjective losses, such as the “good will” a business owner has developed in a particular location over the years.

The California Department of Transportation was once ordered to sell land for housing that it had previously condemned for highways because the highways were never built or were constructed along alternate rights of way.

Rulings Rarely Help

But such court decisions do not really help the property owner who simply doesn’t want to sell.

Indeed, most such cases don’t even get to court because a landowner not wanting to sell is not viewed as a practical legal issue.

Once the city gives notice of its intention and public hearings are held, earmarking property for acquisition, then a property owner’s recourse is to dicker about price, Pittman said, and a judge can be asked to set the amount.

“In most cases, it’s resolved before it gets that far because, by and large, most agencies try to do a fair job of pricing,” he explained.

But there are abuses of the concept of condemnation, Pittman added, and there are instances where different value systems make for conflicts that are not easily resolved.

“Farmers,” Pittman observed, “are attached to their land in a way that urban dwellers aren’t.”

MP, LEAVETT BILES / Los Angeles Times