## Facts

- A municipality’s land-development code required subdivision developers to improve abutting streets to current standards even when upgrades were not needed to handle subdivision impacts.
- A developer planned a 247-home residential subdivision adjacent to an existing two-lane asphalt road located in the municipality’s right-of-way and outside the subdivision plat.
- As a condition of plat approval, the municipality required the developer to reconstruct a portion of the adjacent road in concrete to meet municipal standards.
- The developer objected that the existing asphalt was in good condition and that full concrete reconstruction was unnecessary to serve traffic attributable to the subdivision.
- The developer completed the required road work (about $484,303.79) to obtain approval, then demanded reimbursement.
- After the municipality refused, the developer sued alleging an uncompensated taking under the state constitution and the Fifth Amendment, and sought relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988.

## Issues

1. Whether a developer who completes an allegedly coercive approval condition may bring a takings claim after performance, rather than being required to sue before complying.
2. Whether requiring full reconstruction of an existing abutting road as a condition of subdivision approval is a compensable taking when the requirement is not roughly proportional to the subdivision’s traffic impacts.
3. Whether the developer may recover attorney’s fees and expert witness fees under federal civil-rights statutes based on an alleged federal takings violation.

## Decision

- The court held the takings claim was ripe despite the developer’s post-approval compliance; compliance did not waive the claim.
- The court held the road-reconstruction condition was a compensable taking under the state constitution because the municipality failed to show the condition was roughly proportional to the subdivision’s impact.
- The court upheld compensation measured as the cost of improvements not necessitated by the subdivision’s increased traffic.
- The court denied federal attorney’s fees and expert fees, concluding the federal takings theory did not support a fee award where adequate state compensation was available and awarded.

## Legal Principles

- Development exactions must satisfy an essential nexus to a legitimate public purpose and rough proportionality between the required dedication or expenditure and the development’s projected impacts; the government must make an individualized determination.
- A municipality effects a compensable taking under the state constitution when it conditions development approval on public improvements whose costs exceed what is roughly proportional to the development’s impacts.
- A developer may perform an approval condition to proceed with a project and later seek compensation for the portion of the condition not attributable to the development’s impacts; performance under pressure to obtain approval is not treated as a voluntary waiver.
- Federal civil-rights fee recovery for a takings theory is unavailable when the claimant receives adequate compensation through state-law remedies such that the asserted federal claim does not mature into an independently actionable federal violation for fee purposes.

## Conclusion

The court treated the municipality’s requirement that a developer fully reconstruct an adjacent road to higher construction standards as a compensable taking because the municipality did not justify the exaction as roughly proportional to the subdivision’s traffic impacts; it permitted a post-compliance compensation suit but rejected federal civil-rights fee shifting where state compensation fully remedied the taking.


Town of Flower Mound v. Stafford Estates Ltd. P’ship, 135 S.W.3d 620 (Tex. 2004)