Justia Real Estate & Property Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff sued the City of Jonesboro, its mayor, and the members of its city council, alleging that methane gas from a city landfill invaded a tract of land owned by plaintiff and so reduced its value which amounted to a taking of the property by the city. Plaintiff sought just compensation under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, other compensatory damages, punitive damages, and injunctive relief. At issue was whether the district court properly granted defendants' motion to dismiss plaintiff's complaint, holding that plaintiff's claims were barred by issue preclusion and, in the alternative, that the court lacked jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. The court held that plaintiff's claims did not complain of injuries caused by the state court judgment, but of injuries caused by the invasion of plaintiff's land by methane emanating from the city's landfill. Thus, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine did not apply to those claims. The court found that the parties and the district court focused on issue preclusion, but the court held that the case was more readily resolved based on claim preclusion. Thus, the court held that plaintiff's claims were barred by claim preclusion and that plaintiff did not avoid claim preclusion through the reservation of federal rights that he included in the third amended complaint in the state court action. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

Following remand for consideration of the effect of 11 U.S.C. 544(a) on the trustee's motion to sell, the bankruptcy court entered judgment denying the trustee's request to sell jointly-owned real estate free and clear of defendant co-owner's interest pursuant to 11 U.S.C. 363(b) and (h). The Chapter 7 trustee appealed. The court held that the bankruptcy court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to sell where, based on the record before it, the bankruptcy court concluded that the trustee had not met his burden of proving that the benefit to the bankruptcy estate of the sale outweighed the detriment to defendant and where the bankruptcy court's findings of fact regarding the benefit of the estate and detriment to defendant were not clearly erroneous. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.

St. Charles Tower, Inc. (St. Charles) filed suit against defendants after they declined to issue St. Charles a conditional use permit necessary to construct a proposed cell-phone tower in Franklin County. After the district court entered a consent judgment, trustees of a homeowner's association that opposed construction of the tower (Intervenors) sought to intervene in the litigation in order to challenge the consent judgment on the grounds that it violated state law. The district court granted their motion to intervene but denied their motion to alter, amend, or vacate the consent judgment and intervenors appealed. The court held that the consent judgment impermissibly circumvented sections 32 and 81 of the Land Use Regulations. Therefore, the court held that the district court erred in holding that the consent judgment did not violate state law and that any violation was justified as a necessary remedy for a violation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. 332(c)(7)(B)(v). Accordingly, the court reversed the denial of intervenors' motion and remanded for further proceedings.

Debtor appealed from an order of the bankruptcy court sustaining creditor's objection to her claim of a homestead exemption as to the bank's claim. Debtor used the proceeds from the sale of her Cerromar property to build the Pleasant Hill property, in which she asserted a homestead exemption. At issue was whether the bankruptcy court properly sustained the bank's objection to debtor's homestead exemption. The court held that creditor established that its debt was incurred before debtor acquired the Pleasant Hill property, which meant the property would not be exempt from creditor's judgment and that the Cerromar property was not legally debtor's homestead and she could not avail herself to the protection of Iowa Code 561.20. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment because the bankruptcy court properly sustained creditor's objection to debtor's claim of homestead exemption as to creditor's preexisting debts.