Background
In the 1960s, Key Haven Associated Enterprises obtained approvals to develop submerged land in the Florida Keys as the Key Haven Tenth Addition. It dredged canals, filled land, and developed most of the planned residential lots, but state environmental authorities halted further dredge-and-fill work effective January 1, 1973 after new environmental and water-management legislation took effect.
About 50 years later, Key Haven applied to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for permits to dredge and fill five remaining lots. DEP denied the application after an administrative proceeding. Key Haven then sued for declaratory relief and inverse condemnation, alleging that the denial caused a categorical regulatory taking under Lucas by eliminating all economically beneficial use of the lots.
The Court’s Holding
The First District Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment for DEP and the Department of Economic Opportunity because Key Haven’s inverse-condemnation claim was barred by Florida’s four-year statute of limitations. The court held that the claim accrued decades earlier, when the State halted the dredge-and-fill project and later local comprehensive-plan restrictions independently prohibited development of the lots.
Although an as-applied regulatory-takings claim generally requires a final governmental decision, the court held that Key Haven already had one in the 1970s and 1980s. A new permit application in 2018 was not necessary to establish futility because the earlier governmental actions had conclusively barred the same proposed dredge-and-fill development. The court therefore did not reach the merits of Key Haven’s Lucas-style taking theory.
Key Takeaways
- A regulatory-takings claim accrues when government action has made the permitted use of the property final and clear.
- A later permit denial does not restart the limitations period when earlier government action already conclusively prohibited the proposed development.
- Because the claim was untimely, the court did not decide whether the regulations effected a categorical taking.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores that landowners cannot preserve a takings claim indefinitely by filing a later application for development previously and definitively barred by government action. Where regulations and official actions have long made a proposed use impossible, the limitations clock may begin before a later formal permit denial.