Cite as: 526 U. S. 687 (1999)
Opinion of Souter, J.
before Hurley and after Kirby Forest Industries, which have emphasized the common underlying nature of direct and inverse condemnation cases; the commencement of inverse condemnation actions by property owners, and direct condemnation proceedings by the government, does not go to the substance of either. As we said in First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U. S. 304 (1987):
" 'The fact that condemnation proceedings were not instituted and that the right was asserted in suits by the owners d[oes] not change the essential nature of the claim. The form of the remedy did not qualify the right. It rested upon the Fifth Amendment.' " Id., at 315 (quoting Jacobs v. United States, 290 U. S. 13, 16 (1933)).
Accord, Boom Co. v. Patterson, 98 U. S. 403, 407 (1879) ("The point in issue [in the inverse condemnation proceeding] was the compensation to be made to the owner of the land; in other words, the value of the property taken. . . . The case would have been in no essential particular different had the State authorized the company by statute to appropriate the particular property in question, and the owners to bring suit against the company in the courts of law for its value"). It is presumably for this reason that this Court has described inverse condemnation actions as it might speak of eminent domain proceedings brought by property owners instead of the government. See Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U. S. 255, 258, n. 2 (1980) ("Inverse condemnation is 'a shorthand description of the manner in which a landowner recovers just compensation for a taking of his property when condemnation proceedings have not been instituted' ") (quoting United States v. Clarke, 445 U. S. 253, 257 (1980)). See also Armstrong v. United States, 364 U. S. 40, 49 (1960); Grant, supra, at 192-193 ("The difference between condemnation and inverse condemnation inheres precisely in the 'character' of
735
Page: Index Previous 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007