Airport noise complainant will have his day in court

PALMER — The state’s highest court has revived a property dispute over noise at the city’s airport that a Superior Court judge had previously thrown out.

Ray Briggs lives in a home adjoining the Palmer Municipal Airport. He’s owned it since 1989.

Most of the major developments at the airport — from a major expansion project to the construction there of the state Division of Forestry’s main office for this region of the state and the helicopters and air tankers that came with it —happened after Briggs arrived.

“In 1997 Briggs complained to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, alleging that Palmer had committed an unconstitutional taking of his property,” reads an opinion from the Alaska Supreme Court penned by Justice Joel Bolger and released Sept. 12.

He asked the city to buy his property in 2006. In 2007, he filed an “inverse condemnation” against the city.

“He alleged that the noise from the Palmer Airport substantially interfered with the use and enjoyment of his property to such a degree that it rendered his property uninhabitable and entitled him to just compensation,” Bolger writes.

The city moved to exclude various types of evidence, Bolger writes, and, in response, Briggs’ attorney said he wouldn’t call any expert witnesses to testify as to the property’s value.

The attorney said state law allows a defendant to testify to his own valuation of his property.

Superior Court Judge Vanessa White settled the case in favor of the city prior to trial, saying that Briggs didn’t have enough proof to go forward.

“Because proof of damages is an essential element of plaintiff’s inverse condemnation case, the court’s ruling results in dismissal of plaintiff’s case in its entirety,” White wrote.

On appeal, the city argued that Briggs would need to bring experts to testify and that therefore the case couldn’t be proven if the Supreme Court re-opened it. But Bolger disagreed, saying that Briggs’ testtimony could be enough.

“We conclude it was error to rule that Briggs could not testify about damages based on the value of his property before and after the alleged taking. We thus reverse the superior court’s order granting summary judgment that relied on this ruling,” Bolger writes.

The court ordered the case sent back to White “for further proceedings.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.