The City of Madison built a bike path bridge in 2013 that partially blocks visibility of one side of the giant Adams Outdoor billboard. Photo from State Journal archives
The state Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Adams Outdoor Advertising does not have a right to visibility of its billboard. The City of Madison did not illegally take property from the billboard company by building a Beltline bridge for a bicycle path that blocked the view of a billboard, the Supreme Court said in a decision Tuesday.
In a 4-3 decision, the court agreed with a Dane County circuit judge and the 4th District Court of Appeals that Adams had failed to show that the City of Madison took property from Adams in 2013 that requires compensation when the City built the bridge for the Cannonball bike path over the beltline, just east of a Culver’s restaurant. Adams had claimed that the company is due compensation because it was deprived of “all economically beneficial use” of the west-facing side of the billboard. But the court said that the right to visibility of private property from a public road “is not a cognizable right giving rise to a protected property interest.”
20 June 2018