Facts
- Thomas Lee Causby and his wife owned a 2.8-acre tract with a residence and chicken farm near the end of a runway at a municipal airport near Greensboro, North Carolina.
- The Civil Aeronautics Authority’s approved glide path passed over their property at about 83 feet above the ground, close to their house, barn, and treetops.
- Beginning in 1942, the United States leased and used the airport for military operations, with renewals extending potentially through 1967 or the end of the national emergency.
- Military aircraft flew low and frequently over the property, often in groups and close together, sometimes appearing barely to clear the trees.
- The overflights produced intense noise, vibration, and bright nighttime glare.
- The disturbances destroyed the Causbys’ chicken operation; numerous chickens died from fright, and the farm use was abandoned.
- The landowners alleged that the overflights rendered the property unsuitable for its existing uses and constituted a compensable taking.
Issues
- Whether frequent, regular, low-altitude military overflights that directly interfere with the use and enjoyment of land constitute a taking under the Fifth Amendment.
- Whether, and to what extent, landowners have a protected property interest in airspace above their land given federal designation of navigable airspace as public.
- Whether the claim was founded upon the Constitution so as to fall within the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims.
Decision
- The Court held that the low and frequent overflights imposed a servitude on the land and amounted to a taking requiring just compensation.
- The Court rejected the view that landownership extends indefinitely upward, but recognized that owners retain rights in the immediate reaches of airspace necessary to use and enjoy the land.
- Airspace above minimum safe altitudes is generally a public highway; flights below those altitudes that directly and immediately interfere with land use may effect a taking.
- The Court affirmed liability but remanded for determination of the nature and duration of the easement taken and for valuation of compensation on that basis.
- The Court concluded the Court of Claims had jurisdiction because the claim was founded on the Fifth Amendment.
Legal Principles
- Government action can take property by imposing an easement or servitude through recurrent low-altitude overflights, even without physical entry onto the surface.
- A taking occurs when flights are so low and so frequent as to cause direct and immediate interference with the use and enjoyment of land.
- The common-law ad coelum doctrine does not govern modern aviation; landowners nevertheless control the immediate reaches of airspace needed for ordinary land uses.
- Congress may place navigable airspace above minimum safe altitudes in the public domain, but that does not immunize government flights that intrude into protected near-surface airspace and substantially impair land use.
- Just compensation is measured by the owner’s loss, and valuation must reflect the scope and duration (temporary or permanent) of the easement taken.
Conclusion
The Court held that repeated, very low military overflights that directly and immediately destroyed the practical use of private land constituted a Fifth Amendment taking of an avigation easement, requiring compensation and a remand to determine the easement’s scope and value.