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Village’s Unauthorized Use of Dedicated Park Land Prohibited by the “Public Trust Doctrine”—Village’s Use of the Land Was a “Continuing Wrong” Which Tolled the Statute of Limitations and Precluded the Application of the Laches Doctrine

The Court of Appeals, in a full-fledged opinion by Judge Pigott, determined Supreme Court properly granted a permanent injunction, pursuant to the common law “public trust doctrine,” prohibiting the village from building public works structures on dedicated park land.  The action was brought by residents who live near the park, who were later joined by the state.  Because the park land had been used without legislative authority by the village for many decades, the village argued the action was prohibited by the statute of limitations and the doctrine of laches.  The Court of Appeals determined the “continuing wrong doctrine” tolled the statute of limitations and the laches doctrine did not apply to a continuing wrong, or to actions by the state:

The harm sustained by the public when structures having “no connection with park purposes . . . encroach upon [parkland] without legislative authority plainly conferred” … cannot be traced exclusively to the day when the illegal encroachment began. “In New York, we have consistently characterized an unlawful encroachment as a continuous trespass giving rise to successive causes of action” … . Even though here, because the Village owns the parkland, the encroachment is not trespass, it clearly bears the hallmark of continuity common to the trespass cases: defendants are, continuously, in violation of the public trust doctrine and able to abate that wrong. Just as the failure of a landlord to repair a building's common elements, in violation of by-laws, “constituted a continuing wrong that is not referable exclusively to the day the original wrong was committed” … and “[t]he alleged violation of defendants' contractual obligations to comply with the law and refrain from interfering with the rights of other lessees amounts to a continuous or recurring wrong” …, so does a municipality's ongoing failure to comply with the law and seek legislative authorization for non-park use of parkland. The harm does not consist of the lingering effects of a single, discrete incursion, but rather is a continuous series of wrongs. In short, the claim here is “predicated on continuing unlawful acts and not on the continuing effects of earlier unlawful conduct” …  Capruso v Village of Kings Point, 2014 NY Slip Op 04228, CtApp 5-12-14

 

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