A building that collapsed on Jan. 16 at the corner of Bonham Street and 3rd Street SW was taken down by city order a week later. A joint task force on substandard buildings will have its first meeting at 5:30 p.m. today and will hear about a ruling just handed down by the Texas Supreme Court that controls how cities must proceed about demolition or repair of substandard structures. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
By CHARLES RICHARDS
eParisExtra.com
The Texas Supreme Court handed down a ruling last week in a Dallas case that frees up cities across the state to resume demolitions of dilapidated structures.
The ruling itself upheld a lower court’s judgment that the City of Dallas must pay a resident for a residence that was destroyed after a citizen board declared it dilapidated and a public nuisance.
But in affirming the appeal, the high court also made three other important points that paves the way for Paris’ Buildings and Standards Commission to renew its deliberations on substandard structures, to declare whether they are dilapidated, and to order their demolition if the resident doesn’t act immediately to address the problem.
The court held:
The court said if an owner makes a timely appeal (normally within 30 days) of such a ruling – as was the case in Dallas vs. Stewart, in which the city’s board ruled the house a nuisance, rejected the woman’s challenge, and then had the structure destroyed — it is then up to a state district court to decide the matter.
In the Dallas case, the appeal was timely and the Texas Supreme Court upheld a jury’s subsequent finding that the city owed Heather Stewart $130,000 for her East Dallas house, which was torn down in October 2002 despite her appeal.
More often than not, the ruling by a buildings and standards commission is not challenged, the high court noted.
“This may be due to the correctness of the nuisance finding, to the time and expense involved, or to the Local Government Code’s narrow 30-day window for seeking review,” the ruling said.
The property owner’s costs includes not just litigation expenses, but also the civil penalties municipalities can assess against property owners (in Paris, up to $1,000 a day) who fail to comply with repair or demolition orders.
A footnote in the ruling noted:
If the owner of a structure declared by a citizen board to be dilapidated does not challenge the finding, the owner waives the right to appeal to district court later, the high court said.
“A failure to comply with the appeal deadlines and/or the failure to so assert the constitutional claim at that time precludes a party from raising the issue in a separate proceeding,” said the high court order, written by Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson.
In Dallas, city attorney Tom Perkins said:
“Cities are very, very pleased with this decision in the sense that there is certainty about this situation now. You can’t go back and collaterally attack takings for long-concluded cases. Cities were concerned about that.”
The City of Dallas had put demolition projects on hold pending further appeal, and many other cities – including the City of Paris – had followed suit.
“There were cases that were in the pipeline that we did not move forward while there was uncertainty as we sought reconsideration by the Supreme Court. We will now resume taking those cases through the … process,” Perkins said.
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The ruling of the Texas Supreme Court may be found here:
http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/historical/2012/jan/090257_rh.pdf
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Charles Richards Charles Richards moved to Paris in 2004 after retiring from a 40-year career in journalism – the last 26 years as a news writer and sports writer with The Associated Press in Dallas and Washington, D.C. In mid-2004, The Paris News coaxed him out of retirement, and he began covering the police, court and regional beat for The Paris News. Then in early 2005, he was switched to coverage of a sharply divided Paris City Council. He was appointed by the City Council in 2006 to the 12-member City Charter Review Commission, which extensively rewrote the outmoded document. His writing awards include two first-place awards in statewide competition for feature writing. The most recent was his 2005 story on a Paris doctor’s startling use of leeches in a successful attempt to re-attach a man’s severed ear. Over his career, Richards’ interview subjects include Alabama Gov. George Wallace, President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, David Koresh, Arnold Palmer, Muhammad Ali and numerous other political and sports figures. He is an alumnus of Texas Tech, where he was editor of the school newspaper. He lives in Paris with his wife, Barbara, who is retired after 30 years as a teacher and high school counselor.
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