Opinion
No. 99 Civ. 10921 (BSJ).
October 24, 2000.
Memorandum Opinion and Order
Before the Court is defendants' motion pursuant to Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) to dismiss plaintiff's complaint. For the reasons stated below, the motion is granted .
By this action, plaintiff pro se Peter Sudarsky seeks to recover damages in connection with a failed plan to develop a parcel of real estate he purchased on Manhattan's East Side. In particular, he alleges that defendants impeded his plans by requesting an easement for transit purposes, thus delaying the issuance of a building permit, and that, during the course of the delay, defendant City of New York (the "City") downzoned the area in which plaintiff's parcel was located, rendering his proposed structure too large to be built. Plaintiff claims that defendants' actions amounted to a taking of his property without just compensation, in violation of his rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. He has named as defendants the City, the New York City Planning Commission ("CPC"), and the New York City Department of City Planning ("DCP") (referred to collectively herein as the "City"), as well as the New York City Transit Authority ("MTA") (referred to collectively herein as "Transit Defendants")
"Traditionally, the doctrine of res judicata, or claim preclusion, provides that `a final judgment on the merits of an action precludes the parties or their privies from relitigating issues that were or could have been raised in that action.'" Burgos v. Hopkins, 14 F.3d 787, 789 (2d Cir. 1994) (quoting Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 94 (1980)
Plaintiff's claims alleging a violation of his substantive and procedural due process rights, as well as his equal protection rights, were dismissed by Judge Ward in a scholarly and very detailed opinion in 1991. See Sudarsky v. City of New York et al., 779 F. Supp. 287 (S.D.N.Y. 1991), aff'd, 969 F.2d 1041 (2d Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 1064, reh'g denied, 507 U.S. 980 (1993)
Plaintiff now seizes upon Judge Ward's determination that his regulatory takings claim was not ripe, see id. at 301 ("Plaintiffs did not make use of the state court system in order to obtain compensation for their alleged taking, and thus their takings claim is unripe for this reason as well."), to support his theory that this Court left open the possibility that he could return to this Court and relitigate this particular issue, if he was unsuccessful, in state court.
Preliminarily, it should be noted that plaintiff's allegations in the Complaint that there was something unlawful about defendants' insistence that an easement be given as a condition to the development of his parcel, (See Compl. pp. 7 9.), were explicitly addressed and rejected by Judge Ward. See Sudarsky, 779 F. Supp. at 298-301. Judge Ward found that the defendants had established the reasonableness of requiring an easement for subway access in order to offset the increase in pedestrian traffic that might be associated with plaintiff's development. See id.
As to the regulatory takings claim — the aspect of plaintiff's takings claim that was held to be unripe — plaintiff misperceived this Court's ruling. As this Court has already ruled, in order to maintain a claim for a regulatory taking of property, a plaintiff must establish that he was denied economically viable use of his property by virtue of the regulation at issue; and in order to establish that he was so deprived, a plaintiff must first obtain "a final authoritative determination of the type and intensity of development legally permitted on the subject property." See id. at 300.
It is here that plaintiff ignores the crucial holding of this Court in its 1991 decision that Sudarsky "was required to obtain a conclusive determination as to what type of development would be allowed on [his] property . . . . Plaintiffs made no such effort, and may not now pursue a regulatory takings claim in federal court." Id. at 300-01.
This holding precludes plaintiff's new Complaint. As this Court noted in 1991, plaintiff opted to sell off all of the property in question within a year after the City downzoned the area. Indeed, he sold the property for $12 million, see id. at 293, approximately the same price at which he purchased it, which at the very least, establishes that the property was at least no less economically viable than when he bought it. More importantly, however, plaintiff sold the property rather than obtain from the appropriate agencies a determination as to its maximum economic use.
Subsequent to the dismissal of his federal lawsuit plaintiff brought suit in state court on claims arising under the same facts and circumstances as those presented in federal court. The state courts dismissed plaintiff's claims as well.
It is well settled that, pursuant to the Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause, "a federal court must give to a state court judgement the same preclusive effect as would be given that judgement under the law of the State in which the judgement was rendered." Migra v. Warren City School Dist. Bd. of Educ., 465 U.S. 75, 81 (1984); see also Burgos v. Hopkins, 14 F.3d at 789.
That plaintiff presented his regulatory takings claim in state court is manifest both in his state court pleadings and in his various briefs and memoranda presented throughout the history of the state court proceedings. For example, after laying out factual allegations that closely track the allegations in this Complaint, plaintiff claimed — as he does now — that the transit easement was used to deprive him of his right to develop his property according to the plans he submitted, and that defendants' actions in this regard constituted ade facto taking in violation of his constitutional rights. (See Plaintiff's February 17, 1993 Amended Complaint at ¶¶ 73, 84.) While plaintiff limited his pleading to claims arising under the New York State Constitution, he nonetheless frequently raised arguments in state court predicated upon federal law
In granting defendant's summary judgement motion, New York state courts rejected plaintiff's constitutional claims. Indeed, both the Appellate Division, First Department, as well as the Court of Appeals, affirmatively acknowledged that plaintiff had presented constitutional claims and expressly rejected them.
The Appellate Division, First Department held that, "for the reasons stated by the Federal court in dismissing plaintiff's prior federal action, the challenged governmental action does not fall below a floor of constitutional protection for property owners." Sudarsky v. City of New York, 247 A.D.2d 206 (1st Dept.) (quotation marks and citations omitted), app. dismissed, 92 N.Y.2d 845, lv. to app, denied, 92 N.Y.2d 815 (1998), rearg. denied, 93 N.Y.2d 849, rearg. dismissed, 93 N.Y.2d 1042,cert. denied, 120 S.Ct. 49 (1999)
Plaintiff may not avoid the application of res judicata by asserting that he withheld his federal claims from the state court proceeding. As set forth above, plaintiff did in fact raise his federal claims in state court.
Further, where plaintiff's federal "takings" claim is considered unripe, and the litigant seeks instead to vindicate his rights in state court, the final state court judgement precludes subsequent litigation on that claim in federal court. See Palomar Mobilehome Park Assoc. v. City of San Marcos, 989 F.2d 362 (9th Cir. 1993); Peduto v. City of North Wildwood, 878 F.2d 725 (3rd Cir. 1989).
Defendants' motion pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) for an order granting summary judgment is granted . The Clerk of the Court is directed to enter judgment in favor of the defendant and close the case.