## Facts

- David and Carolyn Brown owned a 6,858-acre ranch near Del Rio, Texas, used for cattle ranching, recreational use, and fee-based hunting.
- The Browns built a second home on the ranch and intended to improve the property for recreational use and later sell it for a higher recreational-property price.
- Beginning in January 1991, the Air Force used a nearby auxiliary airfield for pilot training, including “touch and go” exercises that produced recurring flight paths over part of the Browns’ ranch.
- The Browns alleged repeated low-level overflights below 500 feet over roughly 100 acres, causing noise and disturbance.
- The government obtained overflight easements from neighboring landowners; the Browns refused to grant an easement and instead sought compensation.
- The Browns conceded the flights did not reduce their existing ranching or hunting income, relying primarily on expert evidence that overflight noise diminished the ranch’s resale value for recreational use.

## Issues

1. Whether low-level military training flights and resulting noise over part of the Browns’ ranch constituted a Fifth Amendment taking of an avigation easement requiring just compensation.
2. Whether evidence of diminished market value for a preferred future use, without proof of direct and substantial interference with existing surface use and enjoyment, is sufficient to defeat summary judgment.

## Decision

- The Federal Circuit affirmed judgment for the United States.
- The court held the Browns failed, as a matter of law, to show overflights caused a direct, immediate, and substantial interference with use and enjoyment of the land sufficient to constitute a taking of an avigation easement.
- The court held that reduced market value tied to a more profitable anticipated use, without substantial impairment of current uses, does not establish a compensable taking.
- Summary judgment for the government was proper because the undisputed facts did not satisfy the constitutional standard even accepting the Browns’ valuation evidence.

## Legal Principles

- Aircraft overflights and resulting noise constitute a taking only when they impose the functional equivalent of a servitude, shown by a direct, immediate, and substantial interference with the owner’s use and enjoyment of the surface estate.
- The Takings Clause does not require compensation solely because government action diminishes property value.
- Proof focused on speculative or prospective highest-value uses is insufficient absent substantial interference with the property’s existing uses.
- Summary judgment is appropriate in takings cases when undisputed facts cannot, as a matter of law, meet the threshold for a compensable taking.

## Conclusion

Because the Browns did not show that military training overflights substantially impaired the ranch’s ongoing uses, their claim rested only on diminished resale value for a desired future recreational market, which did not amount to a Fifth Amendment taking.


Brown v. United States, 73 F.3d 1100 (Fed. Cir. 1996)