United States v. 93.970 Acres of Land

Background

In 1947 the United States leased an airfield to a private aviation company, saying the field was needed in a stand-by role for naval aviation. The written lease included an explicit clause allowing the Government to revoke the lease during a declared national emergency. In 1954 the Army decided the land was needed for a NIKE missile site; notices signed by the Secretaries of the Army and Navy said the President’s 1950 national emergency remained in effect. The company refused to leave, and rather than wait for separate lawsuits, the Government filed one complaint to condemn whatever possessory interest the company might have.

Reasoning

The key question was whether the Government could both assert it had revoked the lease and, in the same case, seek to condemn any compensable interest. The lower courts treated the Government’s condemnation suit as an “election” that abandoned the earlier revocation, and a jury awarded the company $25,000 under instructions limiting revocation to “aviation purposes.” Relying on the lease language and statutes that made such leases revocable in wartime, the Court held the revocation valid, rejected the rigid election-of-remedies rule against the Government, and ruled federal law governed these essential federal functions.

Real world impact

The ruling allows the United States to invoke an explicit wartime revocation clause and pursue immediate condemnation in the same case, avoiding a forced choice that would delay takeovers. That outcome preserves the Government’s ability to obtain and use land quickly for defense and other federal needs, subject to the lease terms and payment rules.