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A company that owns a car dealership in Carmel isn’t entitled to compensation for the closure of access on a road that’s part of an eminent domain action, the Court of Appeals of Indiana has ruled in reversing a lower court’s decision.
Carmel used eminent domain in 2017 to convert the intersection of Keystone Avenue and 96th Street into a roundabout.
Carmel filed a condemnation complaint in which it claimed it needed to acquire three separate property interests from Barham Investments LLC, including 0.017 acres in fee simple, an access-control line and 0.0111 acres in a temporary right-of-way for construction.
Barham owns a car dealership with a main entrance on Threel Road, which is near the intersection.
Barham objected to the complaint, claiming Carmel failed to properly identify all ownership interests, including the Threel Road easement.
Carmel had already condemned Threel Road in a separate cause — Carmel v. County Line Owners Association, Inc., 49D02-1801-PL003953 — and didn’t name the road in its condemnation complaint or seek to acquire it.
The Marion Circuit Court denied Barham’s objection and the parties entered into an agreed order that authorized Carmel’s acquisition of the property.
The order said the taking consisted of “frontage along Threel Road” and that the access-control line “will be the new west property line of the subject, and the intent is to limit any access to the west of this line towards Keystone.”
The trial court instructed court-appointed appraisers to appraise the property.
In June 2018, they assessed the total compensation due to Barham to be $163,000.
Barham disputed the valuation and requested a jury trial.
In January 2021, Carmel moved for partial summary judgment, arguing Barham was not entitled to compensation for its loss of access to Threel Road. The city relied on its prior action.
The trial court denied the motion.
In May 2022, a jury awarded Barham $2.4 million in damages.
Carmel moved to correct error, for a new trial or for remittitur, and also moved to strike and correct the judgment concerning interest.
The trial court agreed with Carmel’s position on interest but denied the motions to correct error and for a new trial or remittitur.
On appeal, Carmel argued it did not in this case acquire Threel Road or an easement in the road. Thus, the city argued, the case should be controlled by the traffic-flow rule.
The Court of Appeals agreed, ruling there was no easement at the time of Carmel’s acquisition in this case.
The appellate court determined Barham’s alleged interest in Three Road is “noticeably absent” from the acquisition spelled out in the agreed order.
Based on the language of Barham’s deeded easement, the opinion says, Barham at some point had ingress and egress rights in Threel Road — not to any specific curb-cut onto the road in the property Carmel sought to acquire.
“We cannot expand the deeded easement’s language to include a right to curb-cut access to Threel Road from the Property when the easement reserved no such right,” the opinion says.
Even if there was a taking, the Court of Appeals ruled, Barham’s easement granted it only a right to ingress and egress over Threel Road — not to a curb cut on the road, and the interference is “neither substantial nor material.”
The Court of Appeals also ruled the trial court erred when it denied Carmel’s motion for partial summary judgment on the issue of whether Barham was entitled to compensation specifically for the loss of access to Threel Road.
The parties disputed whether a compensable taking occurred in this case.
“Either way, our conclusion is the same: Barham was not entitled to compensation for the closure of access to Threel Road in this case,” the opinion says. “Carmel had already acquired Threel Road in the County Line Action, thereby extinguishing whatever rights Barham had had in Threel Road, and the closing of Barham’s access by the taking in this case is non-compensable under the ingress-egress and traffic-flow rules.”
The case was remanded with instructions to grant partial summary judgment to Carmel.
Judge Cale Bradford wrote the opinion. Judges Melissa May and Paul Mathias concurred.
The case is City of Carmel v. Barham Investments, LLC, Marion County Treasurer, and Coast to Coast Carmel Corporation, 22A-PL-2399.
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