The court affirms Law Division orders consolidating and dismissing seven inverse condemnation actions against the Department of Environmental Protection under the entire controversy doctrine, leaving plaintiffs to their remedies in the DEP's condemnation action against their homeowners association, in which plaintiffs have been participating since 2019.
The case arises out of the State's acquisition of a perpetual storm damage reduction easement by eminent domain in the Association's unbuildable, two-and-a-half-acre beach lot along the Atlantic Ocean in Point Pleasant Beach as part of the Manasquan Inlet to Barnegat Inlet Storm Damage Reduction Project. Plaintiffs are seven of the twenty-two homeowner members of the Association, each holding a non-exclusive easement appurtenant for recreational purposes in the Association's beach.
When the court declared DEP had the authority to partially condemn the Association's beach for shore protection in 2016, it entered orders permitting members of the Association to present claims for severance damages allegedly caused to their homes by the partial taking of the beach lot before the condemnation commissioners. Plaintiffs appeared at the commissioners' hearing in 2019 and have appealed from the commissioners' report and award. They have an order in the condemnation action ensuring that among the issues to be tried to a jury will be "the separate just compensation due to each of the respective [plaintiffs] by reason of the taking . . . of property of each . . . and any damages to their respective residential lots." Because plaintiffs' rights to separate awards for just compensation for the loss of value to their homes, if any, resulting from DEP's exercise of eminent domain as to the beach lot are fully protected through their participation in the earlier filed condemnation action, the court affirms dismissal of their inverse condemnation actions under the entire controversy doctrine.
The court also affirms rejection of plaintiffs' claim that their recreational easements provided them the right to exclude non-Association members from the Association's beach, as neither the express wording of the easement nor the Association's reservation of the right to operate the beach commercially in a 2005 settlement of public trust litigation supports that claim.