Marquette Transportation Company, L.L.C., et al. v. Entergy Mississippi, Incorporated

This Court has unequivocally declared through takings decisions that a private property owner must have a compensable interest to recover damages. Since the earliest decisions, including United States v. ChandlerDunbar Water Power Company, 229 U.S. 53 (1913), this Court has also acknowledged that the right to the use of the navigable waters is a qualified one and subordinate to the public right of use and absolute power of Congress to regulate them. When these principles are at issue in cases before the Court of Claims, the property owner must also prove a compensable claim and to do so must establish a valid permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers.1 On the admiralty side of law, however, the absolute requirement for a permit has been lost in the analysis of longstanding presumptions, including the Oregon and Pennsylvania Rules. A writ is necessary to resolve this conflict and reconcile admiralty law with these land-based decisions and resolve two questions:

1. Land-based decisions in the takings context mandate permit compliance as a threshold for a plaintiff to have a compensable property interest.2 For the exact same issue under the general maritime law, should the plaintiff claiming damage to a structure placed on navigable waters and which is subject to permit compliance under the Rivers and Harbors Act also have to show that its structure was permitted in order to maintain a compensable property interest in a maritime tort action?

2. Yaist v. United States, 17 Cl. Ct. 246 (1987).

3. United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Water Power Company, 229 U.S. 53 (1913); Yaist v. United States, 17 Cl. Ct. 246 (1987).