Public bodies (mostly municipal authorities) have been known in practice to divert privately-owned real property to public use in zoning plans without going through the expropriation process. Given that the expropriations process is generally not initiated for years, in order to recover their losses property owners have been filing actions for damages on theories of takings without expropriation.
Takings without expropriation can be divided into de facto and de jure takings. In de jure takings, the property in question is zoned into a non-housing purpose, such as a park or a road, but there is no actual use of the land by the governmental authority. In de facto takings, the property is actually used by the administration for the public purpose to which it has been allocated. Actions for damages by property owners against administrative bodies have been known to notably increase the caseloads of courts.
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