§ 8.01-187.Commissioners, condemnation jurors, or court to determine compensation for property taken or damaged.

Section 8.01-187 bridges declaratory judgment practice with eminent domain procedure for a specific kind of case: an inverse condemnation claim, where a property owner uses a declaratory judgment action to establish that the government has taken or damaged their property within the meaning of Article I, Section 11 of the Constitution of Virginia, without the government having formally condemned it first.

Once that determination is made in the declaratory judgment proceeding, the statute gives it sixty days to be followed by payment of compensation, or at least some action to determine what compensation is due. If neither happens within that window, the property owner can move the same court that entered the judgment to appoint commissioners, condemnation jurors, or the court itself to fix just compensation, after reasonable notice to the government entity on the other side.

From that point forward, the proceeding runs on the procedure prescribed for the condemning authority — the same process that would apply had the government initiated a formal condemnation case. The statute fixes one variable specially: rather than using the valuation date that Section 25.1-100 would otherwise set, the date of valuation is the date the court determines the property was taken or damaged, tying the compensation to the moment the constitutional violation occurred rather than to the date of this later proceeding.