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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4327 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 23, 2023

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In the linked decision, § I lays out the background, and § II.C.1 explains the important part of the reasoning. tl;dr:

The government gave to the property owner three years of notice prior to the seizure, and even would have permitted her to buy back the 40-k$ condominium for the 15-k$ amount of the debt (with a lump sum or with an installment plan) during the four months between the seizure and the sale. But she failed to avail herself of those options (clearly communicated by personal service), and she has not presented any evidence that she was unable to do so. In that context, there is no unconstitutional taking.

[T]he United States Supreme Court has unambiguously declined to recognize a former property owner’s “fundamental interest in the surplus” by virtue of her prior ownership of the forfeited property. To the contrary, Nelson [v. New York (352 US 103)] held that the former owner has a property interest in the surplus only if a provision of a constitution, statute, or municipal code creates such an interest. Like the Oregon statute at issue in Reinmiller, Minnesota’s statutory scheme gives the property owner no right to the surplus.

My reading of that ample notice section was that it was forestalling process claims. I didn’t realize it covered the takings option too.

There's a timing issue here because the compensation given to the state for the delinquent tax was the property itself not the proceeds from its sale. The landowner has no interest in the surplus because the surplus didn't exist until after the state had taken title to the property and subsequently sold it. Therefore, you'd need some statutory provision to establish that a prior owner was entitled to a surplus.

Think of it this way: Suppose the state had condemned the property under eminent domain for a value of $15,000, and the landowner neither signed off on the sale nor challenged the condemnation in court. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the court awarded the state the property for the $15,000 they had initially offered, and they mailed the landowner a check. Subsequently, the project the government condemned the property for never materialized, and they sold it to a third party for $40,000. Does the prior landowner have a right to the surplus? It would be hard to argue that she does, unless there's some kind of statute saying she's entitled to it.

Quote from the Supreme Court decision:

[W]e do not have here a statute which absolutely precludes an owner from obtaining the surplus proceeds of a judicial sale.… What the [government] has done is to foreclose real property for charges [several] years delinquent and, in the absence of timely action to redeem or to recover any surplus, retain the property or the entire proceeds of its sale. We hold that nothing in the Federal Constitution prevents this where the record shows adequate steps were taken to notify the owners of the charges due and the foreclosure proceedings.

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