Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass'n v. DeBenedictis

Infobox SCOTUS case
Litigants=Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass'n v. DeBenedictis
ArgueDate=November 10
ArgueYear=1986
DecideDate=March 9
DecideYear=1987
FullName=Keystone Bituminous Coal Association v. DeBenedictis, Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Enviromental Resources, et al.
USVol=480
USPage=470
Citation=
Prior=
Subsequent=
Holding=Keystone have not satisfied their burden of showing that 4 and 6 and the regulations' 50% rule constitute a taking of private property without compensation in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
SCOTUS=1986-1987
Majority=Stevens
JoinMajority=Brennan, White, Marshall, Blackmun
Dissent=Rehnquist
JoinDissent=Powell, O'Connor, Scalia
LawsApplied=

"Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass'n v. DeBenedictis", 480 U.S. 470 (1987) was an important United States Supreme Court case regarding the interpretation of a "taking". The court upheld a Pennsylvania law which limited coal mining that caused damages to buildings, dwellings and cemeteries through subsidence. Despite the fact that the law required 50% of the coal beneath those structures to be left in place (an amount representing approximately 2% of plaintiff's total coal in place, see id. at 496), a 5 to 4 decision written by Justice Stevens found that the law did not constitute a regulatory taking under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Justices Rehnquist, Powell, O'Connor and Scalia dissented.

This decision ran in stark contrast to "Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon", an earlier case that was decided on substantially similar facts. The defining difference between the cases was not in the facts, but in the court's determination of what constituted a taking. In the Pennsylvania Coal case, the Court looked at the reduction in value of the coal as was affected by the regulation. The reduction in value was found to be great and, as a result, amounted to a taking.

The framework for the "Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City" test for regulatory takings was altered by the Keystone verdict. In Keystone, the Court found that the takings denominator—that is, what the regulated party had before regulation—should be enlarged. In Pennsylvania Coal they looked at the Coal that was 'taken' and divided it by the value of the coal in that immediate area. When faced by a similar question in Keystone, the Court chose to divide by the amount of coal the company held—which, in this case, meant that Keystone had lost a very small percentage of value (something along the lines of five percent). When using this greatly reduced percentage, the court found that there had been no taking that required compensation.

ee also

*List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 480
*"Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon" (1922)

Further reading

*cite journal |last=Geck |first=J. |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=1987 |month= |title="Keystone Bituminous Coal Association v. DeBenedictis": The Court's Emphasis on the Public Purposes of Environmental Protection Rewrites "Pennsylvania Coal" |journal=Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation |volume=2 |issue= |pages=283 |issn=10490280 |url= |accessdate= |quote=

External links

* [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=480&page=470 Full text opinion from Findlaw.com]