RLR Investments, LLC v. City of Pigeon Forge, No. 20-6375 (6th Cir. 2021)
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RLR owns land on the Little Pigeon River. Tract 1 had a private resort and parking spaces. Tract 2 had a duplex building. The city decided to build a pedestrian walkway along the River, going through both tracts, and filed a petition for condemnation of a permanent easement. The easement would make some of the parking spaces on Tract 1 unusable. The petition also sought temporary construction easements, including one on which the city would construct Tract 2 parking spaces to replace those lost on Tract 1. RLR argued that the compensation for the loss of the spaces was too low and that the plan of building parking spaces on Tract 2 was a private, rather than public, purpose.
The court ruled in favor of the city, which took possession of the land and built the walkway, but never built the parking spots.
Before valuation proceedings, RLR filed suit in federal court, alleging an unlawful taking under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and 42 U.S.C. 1983. The district court held that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine because the source of RLR’s injury was the state court’s order. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, rejecting an argument that the Supreme Court’s 2005 Exxon decision abrogated Sixth Circuit precedent applying Rooker-Feldman to interlocutory orders. The state-court order of possession counts as a judgment under Rooker-Feldman.
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