Miaoli Dapu case remanded by the Supreme Administrative Court for retrial; Zhang Pharmacy and 3 other households have a chance to get their land back
The land of Zhang's Pharmacy in Dapu, Miaoli may yet be returned and rebuilt! The Supreme Administrative Court's latest ruling (Supreme Administrative Court 104 Nian Pan Zi No. 209) holds that, according to ordinary rules of experience, even if the original land of Zhang's Pharmacy has already been paved with asphalt, covered in cement and fitted with traffic signals, it is still not impossible to return it; the original judgment was too hasty, and so the Taichung High Administrative Court's retrial judgment of last year is partially revoked and remanded for continued proceedings.
The controversy over the Dapu case has not subsided for many years. Although on January 3 last year the Taichung High Administrative Court ruled that the zone expropriation in the Dapu case was unlawful, and the four demolished households Zhang's Pharmacy, Zhu Shu, Huang Fu-ji and Ke Cheng-fu won their case, because the houses of the four households had already been demolished and the land of Zhang's Pharmacy was already in use as a road, objectively it could not be returned. The judgment pointed out that the demolished households could only sue for damages (state compensation).
However, because the four Dapu households still hoped to get their land back, they continued to appeal. Today the Supreme Administrative Court's judgment was handed down. Lawyer Zhan Shun-gui mentioned that page 44 of the judgment explicitly states that the fact that the original land of Zhang's Pharmacy was paved into a road does not mean the original state cannot be restored, and therefore the Taichung High Administrative Court's judgment is partially revoked. Under the provisions of the Administrative Litigation Act, the opinion expressed by the Supreme Administrative Court is binding on the district court, so when the case returns to the Taichung High Administrative Court in the future, he believes the chance of Zhang's Pharmacy being rebuilt will be greatly increased.
The Taiwan Rural Front pointed out that last year the Taichung High Administrative Court, based on a mistaken understanding of the facts and the law, actually produced an absurd judgment in which "the residents won but the county government was exempt from liability." For more than a year, the four Dapu households have had a winning judgment in hand but have never seen their homes rebuilt, so that families such as Zhang's Pharmacy, which originally stood on Gongyi Road in Zhunan, have still not obtained true justice. Now the Supreme Administrative Court's judgment gives the reconstruction of the four Dapu households' homes a glimmer of hope.
However, the Taiwan Rural Front also mentioned that justice delayed is not justice. The Dapu case has already sacrificed too many residents, yet justice still cannot be upheld, and it called on the Taichung High Administrative Court to conduct the retrial as soon as possible in accordance with the intent of the Supreme Administrative Court's judgment and to affirm that the Miaoli County Government should bear the legal responsibility for returning the land and rebuilding.