Law Suits Agains Bus Company in Ct

Location:
EMINENT DOMAIN; TRANSPORTATION, CT DEPT OF;

SUPREME COURT Decision IN THE DATTCO CASE

By: Paul Frisman, Principal Analyst

ISSUE

Summarize the state Supreme Court ' s Dec 27, 2016 determination in Dattco Inc. et al v. the Commissioner of Transportation.

SUMMARY

In a 4-two decision, the country Supreme Court ruled that the state Section of Transportation (DOT) improperly exercised its eminent domain power when it condemned documents that permitted 4 private bus companies to provide service on particular routes, including some routes now traveled past CT Fastrak. In doing then, the courtroom found that a police force granting DOT eminent domain power applies to tangible assets, such equally state and buildings, and not to intangible operating rights.

In doing so, the court reversed a Superior Court ruling and directed the lower court to decide whether to issue an injunction blocking the condemnation and barring the DOT commissioner from operating buses over the private companies ' routes.

BACKGROUND AND Case HISTORY

The condemnation example decided by the Supreme Courtroom is one of two cases involving DOT and four charabanc companies. By law, coach companies in Connecticut operate under "certificates of public convenience and necessity" (certificates) that requite a visitor the right to operate buses on a specific route.

Each of the four companies -- Dattco Inc., Collins Motorcoach Service, Kelly Transit Co., and the New Britain Transportation Co. (NBT) -- operated under certificates first issued decades ago by the (now defunct) Public Utilities Commission.

The DOT commissioner condemned the certificates in 2014 under a constabulary that authorizes him to take "any country, buildings, equipment or facilities" that he believes necessary to operate or improve state transportation services ( CGS � 13b-36(a) ). A Superior Courtroom judge upheld the state ' s condemnation action in December 2014 and the charabanc companies appealed to the Supreme Court.

The condemnation action occurred in connectedness with a second, divide case, not yet decided, involving the four bus companies and DOT in which the companies are trying to prevent DOT from awarding their routes to other companies.

SUPREME COURT Conclusion

Explicit Statutory Authorisation

In ruling against DOT, the courtroom considered the DOT commissioner ' s specific practice of its eminent domain power under CGS � 13b-36(a) and the broader eminent domain power he has in overseeing the state ' s transportation system.

The court ' s decision largely turned on the meaning of the word "facilities" in the statute. The jitney companies contended the proper definition of "facilities" refers to tangible items, in the same style as do the statute ' south accompanying words (land, buildings, and equipment). But DOT interpreted the discussion more than broadly, proverb "facilities" also covers intangible items that promote "the ease of any activity," such as certificates permitting bus operations.

The Supreme Court rejected DOT ' southward interpretation, stating that the certificates, more than but facilitating the bus companies ' operations, provided "the of import, fundamental potency to conduct the [omnibus] service in the beginning identify."

"Interpreting ' facilities ' to refer not only to what makes an activity easier, simply also to the very authority that authorizes the action…would disproportionately stretch the meaning of that term too far," the courtroom said. It said that doing so would also contradict the court ' south responsibility to strictly interpret the scope of the state ' s eminent domain power in favor of property owners.

The court said this interpretation was bolstered past other statutory language, such as that explicitly allowing transit districts to larn transit company franchises. The court noted that "no similarly clear language authorizing the taking of a company ' s operating rights appears in the statutes governing the [DOT] commissioner ' s eminent domain power, further indicating that the legislature did not intend for his takings power to extend to the certificates at event."

Commissioner ' south Broad Powers

The court also addressed the commissioner ' due south contention that he has broad, implicit say-so to condemn the certificates, regardless of whether CGS � 13b-36(a) grants him explicit authority to do so.

The commissioner argued that since the police allows him to accept a bus visitor ' s tangible assets, it stands to reason that he can also condemn its right to operate. The court agreed that the constabulary gives the commissioner the power to suspend or revoke a document for crusade, and that his wide condemnation power (over tangible assets) can supplement those actions.

"If the commissioner should demand to revoke a bus company ' s certificate for poor performance and choose to have the country or some other visitor operate over certain routes," the courtroom said, " CGS � 13b-36(a ) also permits him to take the coach company ' s tangible assets for use in continuing to provide bus service…with a different operator."

But the court said information technology is possible the legislature may not have intended to give DOT the ability to have a bus company ' s operating rights when it transferred regulatory dominance over motorbus routes from the Public Utilities Commission to DOT in 1979, ten years afterward it enacted CGS � 13b-36 (a) .

"Given that the [DOT] commissioner had no power to regulate either the certificates or the services provided by charabanc companies when � 13b -3 vi (a) was enacted," the court said, "it would not be absurd for the legislature to allow the commissioner to have tangible items necessary to meliorate transportation systems just not to condemn rights that he was not otherwise expressly permitted to grant or regulate."

While "the legislature may ultimately deem it good policy for the commissioner to have the ability to condemn certificates," the court held, "we conclude that the legislature has not nonetheless granted that power to the commissioner."

DISSENT

The two dissenting justices accepted the state ' s interpretation of "facilities" to include the bus companies ' certificates considering, they wrote, "they aid or facilitate the performance of the plaintiffs ' businesses by granting them rights to operate their buses on the designated routes." Doing so, they wrote, "aids the commissioner in executing his statutory mandate to promote and coordinate public transportation in the country, including ventures such as the Hartford-New Britain busway."

To rule otherwise, they warned, would "foster the impermissibly bizarre result of handcuffing the commissioner past allowing him to take a bus company ' south armada or buildings, but not its operating rights… including for the purpose, as in this case, of lowering usa ' transit subsidy expenses by assuasive for those new routes to be competitively bid on the open market."

DISPOSITION

The Supreme Court directed the Superior Court to conduct further proceedings on whether to grant an injunction and what form information technology should have, in function because an injunction might affect the second case involving the 4 bus companies and DOT.

PF:cym

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Source: https://www.cga.ct.gov/2017/rpt/2017-R-0005.htm

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