UPDATES & ANALYSIS

Landowners challenging DOT eminent domain action missed a critical filing deadline, Iowa Supreme Court holds

by Rox Laird | December 5, 2024

Owners of farmland in Story County seeking to block the Iowa Department of Transportation’s condemnation of part of their property for a highway project succeeded in getting their appeal before the Iowa Supreme Court even after missing one filing deadline, but they lost their bid to revive their case in district court because they missed a second and critical deadline.

Merle D. Brendeland, Janis Brendeland, Megan Russell, and Joseph Russell sought to prevent the DOT from taking what they considered an unnecessarily large slice of their property for a new Interstate 35 interchange with Iowa Highway 210 without allowing access to the highway that would permit commercial development.

The Story County District Court dismissed the property owners’ case because they failed to challenge the State’s eminent domain action within 30 days of being served with the DOT’s notice of assessment, as required by Iowa Code section 6A.24(1).

The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the district court ruling in a decision written by Justice Edward Mansfield joined by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Justices Thomas Waterman and Matthew McDermott. Justice Dana Oxley filed a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Christopher McDonald and David May.

The first question was whether the Iowa Supreme Court had jurisdiction to hear the property owners’ appeal in the first place.

The property owners properly filed their appeal of the Story County District Court ruling with the Iowa Supreme Court, but due to an oversight by their lawyer’s administrative assistant, the required notice of appeal was not filed with the district court within 30 days, as the lawyer intended and as required by Iowa Rule of Appellate Procedure 6.102(2). The property owners promptly filed the notice with the district court after the error was discovered.

The DOT argued that came too late and the appeal should be dismissed. A majority of the Court disagreed.

Under Iowa Rule of Appellate Procedure 6.101(1)(b) notice of appeal must be filed within 30 days after the filing of the final order or judgment of the district court. But under rule 6.101(4) the time for filing a notice of appeal may occur beyond the deadline “provided the notice is filed with the district court clerk within a reasonable time.”

The question before the Court was whether the property owners’ notice of appeal filed with the district court 57 days after the entry of judgment by the district court occurred “within a reasonable time” under rule 6.101(4).

In four previous rulings that addressed this question, the Court has considered what constitutes an acceptable range of delays, holding that 26 days was “near the line” but acceptable while 144 days was too long. This case – where the notice of appeal arrived in district court 57 days after the entry of judgment – “straddles” the line between 26 days and 144, the Court said.

In one earlier ruling, the Court defined “reasonable time” as: “such time as is necessary, under the circumstances, for a reasonably prudent and diligent man to do conveniently what the contract or duty requires should be done, having regard for the rights, and possibly the loss if any to the other party.”

In this case, the Court concluded the delay “didn’t cross the line” and held that the notice of appeal was filed with the district court “within a reasonable time after timely service, although only barely.”

It was a different matter, however, for the property owners’ challenge to the DOT’s exercise of eminent domain. Iowa Code section 6A.24(1) says an action challenging the condemnation or the condemnation proceedings “shall be commenced within thirty days after service of notice of assessment.” The property owners were served with the DOT’s notice of assessment on Jan. 29 but did not file their challenge to the condemnation in district court until March 20, 50 days later.

By using the word “shall” the statute “brooks no exceptions” and proved fatal to the property owners’ case, Justice Mansfield wrote.

In her dissent, Justice Oxley argued that because the landowners’ failed to file their notice of appeal with the district court by the statutory deadline their appeal should have been dismissed by the Supreme Court at the outset for lack of jurisdiction.

The majority “ignores the reason we require notices of appeal to be filed in district court. The copy filed in our court is ‘informational,’” she wrote. “The notice of appeal filed in district court is the one that matters because it alerts the district court that it no longer has jurisdiction over the case.”

Tags: Iowa Supreme Court 2024-25