A Newfoundland court has awarded two land parcels to a municipality that expropriated them from a developer.

The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador ruled that the Town of Paradise acted properly when it rezoned the land for conservation and claimed it from Index Investments.

“The decision affirms the principle that cities and towns do not owe compensation to private landowners whose lands are reduced in value by the reasonable exercise of municipal zoning authority,” wrote lawyers Stephen Penney and Matthew Raske in an assessment of the decision.

Index argued that the expropriation was an improper use of the town’s legal authority, granted the municipality a beneficial interest in the properties and was otherwise unreasonable.

But the court ruled that Index failed to prove that the town gained from the move and all of the land’s reasonable uses were removed.

“The onus was on the developer to show that these possible uses were not reasonable uses. It failed to do so,” wrote Penney and Raske.