quote:The vacant apartment building in Marshall Heights had no roof but good bones. So Erika R. Brown snapped it up from the District at a tax sale. She planned to renovate it for affordable housing.
A month later, Brown's phone rang. It was her appraiser, asking if she had changed her mind and decided to raze the building.
"I said, 'No, what are you talking about?' and he said, 'Well, they're wrecking it right now,' " Brown recalled.
The D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs had condemned the building more than two years earlier and was finally executing a demolition order. Meanwhile, a trust set up by the District government had taken the building for nonpayment of taxes and sold it to Brown, without knowing it was on the demolition list.
Neither agency knew about the other's actions because neither filed the required updates to land records, according to legal filings.
"Everybody I tell this story to says, 'Oh my God, only in D.C.,' " Brown said.
"At the time I thought it was a complete mistake and that it would be pretty easily rectified," Brown said. "But it has come down to this huge, incredibly expensive process."
Brown wants the District to reimburse her the cost of replacing what was torn down, which she said would cost $1.9 million to build today. The District has offered $150,000 to settle the case.
The District has refused to acknowledge its mistakes and, in a series of Kafkaesque legal arguments, has dragged the issue out in court for two years and counting.
The facts are these: In June 1999, the District foreclosed on a four-story building at 5004 D St. SE. In August 2000, the regulatory agency condemned the building and ordered its demolition. In March 2002, the trust sold the 16-unit building to Brown for $95,000.
Thirty-one days later, on April 15, 2002, a D.C. contractor turned it into rubble.
Yikes! Remind me not to adop a child from a DC agency!
posted
On the second page it mentions the zoning issue - she could rehab the existing building, but isn't allowed to put up a new one. Seems to me they get out of this with some zoning exceptions for her plus some cash.
Don't know how legal that would be, though.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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It sucks, but the $150,000 seems fair. I mean, she doesn't have what she paid for, but she would have her money back and then some. Or am I misreading it? Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Well, the traditional measure of damages, assuming liability, would be what it would take to make it as if the wrong never occurred. If the wrong in this case was knocking it down, then the harm is the cost of what she has to do extra because of that knocking down. She's entitled to profit she could have made absent DC's wrongdoing, even if the profit seems outrageous.
However, the wrong might have been in not notifying her before they did it (or before they sold her the building). Damages then would depend on what her options would have been at the time of notification. If she had would have had a chance to correct the condition leading to the condemnation decision, she would be entitled to her extra construction costs minus the cost of what she would have had to do to prevent the demolition.
If she wouldn't have had a chance to correct, then she might be entitled to recission of the sale or interest.
I wonder if title insurance should handle this. Assuming condemnation is a burden on the land, I would think it would.
The big thing to remember, though, is that the purchase price does not define the damages. She's out the time value of her money, she's lost the zoning rule she was going to use, and she faces a riskier development process.
That said, I have no idea if 1.9 Million is fair or 150,000 is unfair. Just that it's hard to tell from what we know.
posted
Yeah, it's hard to tell which is more unfair. I mean, they came and destroyed her property. Will they have learned a lesson if they just pay her back what it cost? Or certainly there is the path of them putting it back to what it was, no exchange of funds. I think that would be the most fair.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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If I find a diamond on the ground, and someone later steals it, they owe me the cost of the diamond, not how much it cost me to arrive at where I found it.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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One way or another they need to make zoning exceptions for her....it is the only way to fix the problems no matter how much money is eventually awarded.
Plus, I would think that she would be entitled to even more considering they are using the courts to dely her.
How can anyone, even a lawyer, argue the governments case with a straight face? They sold something, then destroyed it without notification of the current owner....and then denyed resonsibility for their actions for over two years. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote: I wonder if title insurance should handle this. Assuming condemnation is a burden on the land, I would think it would.
Dag, I would guess that either she didn't get title insurance (many don't on cheap land purchases, if there is no lender to insist on it) or the title insurance had a relatively clear out legally, probably due to DC's negligence in not posting the transfers of title and condemnation. A good-faith title search would not have discovered the condemnation:
quote:Neither agency knew about the other's actions because neither filed the required updates to land records, according to legal filings
quote: Standard policies, as drawn up by the American Land Title Association exclude the following general risks, amongst others: public land use regulation, especially environmental and zoning regulations; eminent domain that is not on record at the date of policy
This case reminds me of one in Oklahoma where a guy donated a worthless property to the city so the fire department could practice on it. The FD came out and torched it and did their drills, only to find out they had lit up a neighbor's property instead of the donated one. Posts: 327 | Registered: Oct 2003
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My uncle got a new satellite dish (the old kind that move around to receive different satellites, not the tiny new ones). He put it in his yard and managed to get all the satellites he wanted but one. There was a tree in the way. He went to his neighbor and said, "If you let me cut down that tree, I'll split the wood and stack it for you."
These were big, 10+ acre fully wooded lots, so the neighbor said, "Sure."
Two days later, his other neighbor showed up and said, "Why did you cut down my tree?" He ended up taking my uncle to court. A reporter asked him why he cut down the tree, and my uncle said, "I wanted to get the Disney Channel on my television."
It got pretty nasty - I don't know how it turned out.
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