Chapter 3 - § 3.8 • ENJOINING THE POWER OF EMINENT DOMAIN

• Jurisdiction: Colorado

§ 3.8 • ENJOINING THE POWER OF EMINENT DOMAIN

A corollary to the rule that the condemnation power cannot be contracted away is the rule that the power also cannot be enjoined. Thus, in Ambrosio v. Baker Metropolitan Water & Sanitation District, it was held that landowners had no authority to obtain injunctive relief to prevent the condemnation of their property for a sewage disposal site.⁷² In reaching this result, the court cited to several older Colorado cases in support of this proposition.⁷³ The court also noted that because the owners had an adequate remedy at law, in the form of damages for the taking of their land, injunctive relief would not lie.

Several years later, in Auraria Businessmen Against Confiscation, Inc. v. Denver Urban Renewal Authority, an owner's ex parte motion for a temporary restraining order against a condemnation action met a similar fate.⁷⁴ Arguing that the authority's relocation benefit statute was unconstitutional because it failed to provide compensation for loss of goodwill, the owner sought to preclude further proceedings to acquire its property. In rejecting this claim, the court relied once again on the Colorado cases precluding injunctive relief to stop condemnation actions.⁷⁵ The court also held that constitutional objections to eminent domain proceedings should be raised in those proceedings and not by way of a collateral injunction action.

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Notes:

^[72] Ambrosio v. Baker Metro. Water & Sanitation Dist., 340 P.2d 872 (Colo. 1959).

^[73] The cases cited by the court were Town of Glendale v. City & County of Denver, 322 P.2d 1053 (Colo. 1958); Colo. Central Power Co. v. City of Englewood, 89 F.2d 233 (10th Cir. 1937); Scanland v. Bd. of County Comm'rs, 97 Colo. 37, 46 P.2d 894 (1935); and Lavelle v. Town of Julesburg, 49 Colo. 290, 112 P. 774 (1911), overruled on other grounds by La Plata Elec. Ass'n...