Beroth Oil Co. v. N.C. Dep’t of Transp.

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By 2013, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) had purchased several hundred properties for the construction of a highway project known as the Northern Beltway. In 2010, Plaintiffs filed a complaint and declaratory judgment against NCDOT, asserting claims for, inter alia, inverse condemnation. Plaintiffs also sought class certification for themselves and all others similarly situated whose property NCDOT was “obliged to purchase.” The proposed class included over 800 property owners within the Northern Beltway. The trial court denied NCDOT’s motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ claim of inverse condemnation but denied class certification. The court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court affirmed in part, vacated in part, and reversed in part the opinion of the court of appeals, holding (1) the courts below erred in analyzing the substantive merits of Plaintiffs’ inverse condemnation claim at the class certification stage; and (2) the court of appeals correctly concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification because the unique nature of property, coupled with the large number of diverse tracts involved in this litigation, would make individual issues predominate over common issues of law and fact in a trial on the merits. View "Beroth Oil Co. v. N.C. Dep't of Transp." on Justia Law