Trafalgar repeatedly requested a rezoning of its fifty-acre tract of land from A-2 Agricultural to single-family residential. Each time Trafalgar asked the County Board of Commissioners to rezone the property, the Board agreed, but every time a voter referendum vetoed the change. Prior to the present federal action, Trafalgar unsuccessfully, exhaustively litigated its claims in the Ohio state courts seeking, among other things, a writ of mandamus to compel the re-zoning of its land and to compel compensation for a taking of its property under both the Ohio and United States Constitutions. Dismissing the case on summary judgment, the District Court found all of Trafalgar’s claims barred by Ohio preclusion law.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal, explaining that the principles of preclusion, which provide that a federal court must give prior state court judgments the same effect as those judgments would be given in the courts of the rendering state, operate to bar Trafalgar’s claims under both the Takings and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution. Turning first to the takings claim, the Court noted that the State court had already determined that no compensation for a regulatory taking was due under the federal and state constitutions since Trafalgar failed to present sufficient evidence that it had been deprived of all economically viable use of the land. The Court said, “Because that issue was directly decided in a previous state court action, it cannot be re-litigated in federal district court.”
Furthermore, the Court explained, “because Trafalgar asserted federal issues in its complaint at the state court level, it cannot now claim to have reserved its federal causes of action for subsequent litigation in federal court.” For the same reasons, the Court upheld the dismissal of Trafalgar’s Equal Protection claim. Trafalgar asserted that since another similar parcel was subsequently re-zoned, the Board committed a new act of discrimination against Trafalgar and that this claim should not be precluded. The Court, however, said that “a new claim is not created every time the Board re-zones another property.” Explaining that, “A subsequent re-zoning does not create a new transaction of occurrence between Trafalgar and the Board and therefore there is no new claim.”
Trafalgar Corporation v. Miami County Board of Commissioners, 2008 WL 553185 (C.A. 6 (Ohio) 3/3/2008).
The opinion can also be accessed at: http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/08a0098p-06.pdf
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