holding that no compensation is required for damage to property during a riot where troops “act[ed] primarily in defense of [the owners’] buildings” and rioters would have inflicted damage on the building anyway
How later courts described this case
- holding that no compensation is required for damage to property during a riot where troops “act[ed] primarily in defense of [the owners’] buildings” and rioters would have inflicted damage on the building anyway
- holding that there was no compensation for takings liability when there was a temporary and unplanned occupation of petitioners’ build- ings by troops who “were acting primarily in defense of pe- titioners’ buildings,” rather than the “general defense” of the zone
- identifying the pragmatic concern that under petitioners’ conception of takings, “governmental bodies would be liable . . . every time policemen break down the doors of buildings to foil burglars thought to be inside”
- noting that government deprivation of property requiring Insofar as factual circumstances such as these raise a Fifth compensation normally takes from an owner use that the Amendment question, I agree with Justice SOUTER that owner may otherwise make of the property
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Stewart,
concurring.
If United States military forces should use a building for their own purposes — as a defense bastion or command post, for example — it seems to me this would be a Fifth Amendment taking, even though the owner himself were not actually deprived of any personal use of the building. Since I do not understand the Court to hold otherwise, I join its judgment and opinion.