A couple of Midwest law firms are aiming to get compensations for landowners who are adjacent to the future Great Redwood Trail.
Law firm Stewart Wald & McCulley, which focuses exclusively on rails-to-trails cases, announced days ago it filed suit against the federal government on behalf of 88 landowners whose properties are adjacent to the rail-to-trail conversion and are planning on adding more landowners to the suit in the coming weeks.
“Over the past two-plus years, SWM has established many meaningful and strong relationships with landowners who possess takings claims against the government for the conversion of the former railroad corridor to a potential recreational trail, including many prominent landowners in the Eureka, Eel River Canyon, and Willits areas,” the release stated.
That announcement came a couple of weeks after another Midwest law firm, Flint Cooper, filed suit against the federal government on behalf of 170 people in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, estimating the estimated payout could exceed $250 million.
The Great Redwood Trail would convert 320 miles of rail between Marin County and Humboldt Bay into a trail that would ultimately connect Eureka to the Bay Area when fully constructed.
The North Coast Railroad Authority, now the Great Redwood Trail Agency, offered its support to the idea of converting the rail, which has been out of service for 20 years, into a trail after extensive studies showed the cost to maintain the railroad corridor in the Eel River Valley was too exorbitant because of variables like landslides.
The trail’s construction requires being able to railbank the rail lines, a process that was established in 1983 through an amendment to the National Trails System Act that allowed the lines to be converted to trails until the time rail service was able to resume — the Surface Transportation Board gave its OK to railbank the Great Redwood Trail line in June.
When the Trails Act was passed, it didn’t include language that would result in adjacent landowners being compensated. However, a Vermont couple began filing lawsuits starting in the 1980s to try to get compensated because of a rail-trail that passed through their property.
When one of the cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990, it found “only some rail-to-trail conversions will amount to takings” while “others are held as easements that do not even as a matter of state law revert upon interim use as nature trails.”
Thus Stewart Wald & McCulley specializes in figuring out how the railroad corridor was originally established.
“SWM thoroughly investigates the railroad corridor and identifies the original conveyance deeds to the original founding railroad,” the release stated. “Those conveyances are paramount to the basis of the lawsuit. The key component to any rails-to-trails takings claim focuses on how landowners originally conveyed land to the railroad company at the time of the railroad’s construction.”
Sonia Waraich can be reached at 707-441-0504.