David N. Sederquist, Jr., and Marilyn T. Sederquist v. City of Tiburon, a Municipal Corporation

David and Marilyn Sederquist appeal the decision of the district court to abstain from exercising jurisdiction over their inverse condemnation action against the City of Tiburón. Having evaluated the important competing policies at stake whenever a federal court voluntarily declines to exercise its lawful jurisdiction, we affirm.

I

In February of 1975, the Sederquists commenced an action in the district court alleging that the City of Tiburón (the city) had engaged in a course of conduct which had the purpose and effect of a “taking” of their real property within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment as applied to the States through the Fourteenth. Their lengthy complaint alleged that by means of an 18-month moratorium on all development in an area encompassing their property, the subsequent inclusion in the “open-space element” of the city’s “general plan” of the road over which they claim an easement of access to their land, and the imposition of burdensome conditions on the right to pave the access road, the city had effectively converted their property into an open park area for public enjoyment and refused to compensate them for this taking. The district judge twice required…