If a city condemns a house to widen a street, for example, the city has clearly taken the house and
must pay its owner. In contrast, if property is destroyed because it poses a threat to the public
health, the owner is not entitled to compensation because the property is not considered to have
value. In the classic food sanitation case, public health officials ordered the destruction of frozen
chicken stored in a cold storage plant that had lost its refrigeration. The owners of the plant
demanded a hearing to determine whether the chicken was really spoiled and compensation for the
chicken that was destroyed. The court ruled that there was no right to a hearing before the
destruction of property and that property that endangered the public health had no value. Thus, the
owners were entitled to no compensation.[North American Cold Storage Co. v City of Chicago, 211
US 306 (1908)]
This decision echoed an earlier ruling involving a compensation claim for property that had been
demolished to prevent the spread of a fire in San Francisco.[Surocco v Geary, 3 Cal 69 (1853)]
Unlike the rotten chicken, which arguably had no value, the property owners sued for their
possessions, which they claimed could have been saved before the fire reached the building, had it
not been destroyed. The court rejected their claims for compensation. It held that the police power
included the right to destroy property if this was necessary to protect the public safety. This
destruction was not taking the property for public purpose and thus no compensation need be paid.
The court rejected the claim that the authorities should have allowed the owners time to remove
their property because such a delay would have increased the danger to the public.
The most controversial modern cases involve regulatory actions that do not destroy property but
limit the owner's use of the property. Examples include wetlands protection laws and endangered
species acts. Such environmental laws are also based on the police power to protect the public
health and safety, but the threat they address is much less direct and immediate than the threat
posed by rotten chicken. The courts are increasingly reluctant to defer to the agency's expertise in
these cases because the harm they seek to prevent is so difficult to measure. Although the courts
still rule with the agencies in most cases, property owners are given extensive rights to court
hearings to contest the actions before they are finalized.
