Missouri high court overturns blight finding in Clayton

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- The Missouri Supreme Court rejected Tuesday an attempt by a wealthy St. Louis suburb to use eminent domain to condemn buildings in its downtown and turn them over for private development.

The Clayton Board of Aldermen in 2005 voted to allow Centene Plaza Redevelopment Corp. to use eminent domain after an urban planner commissioned by the city determined most of a downtown block that was not already owned by Centene was blighted. The city then asked for redevelopment plans.

Centene, which has an office on the opposite of side of that block, already had purchased land that bordered the newly blighted buildings and proposed developing the blighted areas along with its newly acquired property.

The state's highest court ruled Tuesday that Clayton's blight declaration didn't prove the downtown properties had a "social liability." To be declared blighted, state law requires that areas pose an economic and social liability because of "age, obsolescence, inadequate or outmoded design or physical deterioration."

Although the court rejected Clayton's blight finding, judges said they did not consider whether the project met the constitutional criteria for using eminent domain to take private property. The state constitution allows private property to be taken only for public uses, such as eliminating blighted areas.

Instead, a divided Missouri Supreme Court focused on what constituted blight, often a subjective standard that has prompted controversy. The court said proof of an economic liability does not also mean there is a social liability.

According to court documents, the city said the "social liabilities" came from the loss of potential tax revenue.

Judge Ronnie White, the only judge who would have upheld the blight finding, wrote that a decline in economic value is linked to social problems.

In the unsigned majority opinion, Chief Justice Michael Wolff and Judges Stephen Limbaugh Jr., Richard Teitelman and Mary Russell said the court focused on the historical use of eminent domain to redevelop areas that created a "menace injurious to the public health, safety, morals and welfare" of others because the blighted areas are a "breeding ground for juvenile delinquency, infant mortality, crime and disease."

The majority said the condemned properties had fewer police, fire and emergency calls than nearby buildings and thus didn't pose a greater risk than neighboring properties and shouldn't be blighted.

In a separate opinion that agreed with overturning the blight finding, Judge Laura Denvir Stith said a "social liability" goes beyond its traditional uses but not so far as to include lost potential taxes. Gary Lynch, a judge in Missouri's Southern District Court of Appeals, who heard the case in place of Supreme Court Judge William Ray Price Jr., concurred in Stith's opinion.

Stith said buildings don't need to deteriorate to actually pose a social liability; just being "conducive" to crime and ill health is enough. Thus, she wrote, "the city can declare blighted an area it believes is conducive to such conditions as a means of avoiding them."

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Case is Centene Plaza Redevelopment Corp. v. Mint Properties, et. al., SC88487.

On the Net:

Supreme Court: http://www.courts.mo.gov