January 2011

In California Trailer Parks War: Owners Vs. Renters, Time magazine takes a look at the mobile home rent control issues behind the recent Ninth Circuit en banc opinion in Guggenheim v. City of Goleta (our resource page on the case is here). Be sure to take the article’s implicit conclusion (the mobile home owners are getting reamed by the Simon Legree park owners) with a grain of salt – the author’s bias shines through pretty clearly:

  • The rent control ordinances are keeping mobile home park owners from “enjoy[ing] explosive upticks in value” experienced by other California land owners. It’s only fair, after all, that such profiteers not be allowed to make beneficial use of their land.
  • The mobile home park owners employ “lawyers as foot soldiers” in their war on the tenant featured in the article, whom we are told “take peaceful walks with his wife and

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Continue Reading Time On Guggenheim – California Rent Control In The (Biased) Spotlight

To all of you who attended the first day of the Hawaii Land Use Conference today, thank you. As promised, here are the items I discussed during my two sessions:

  • United States v. Milner, 583 F.3d 1174 (9th Cir. 2009) – the case in which the Ninth Circuit affirmed a finding of common law trespass for the building of a wall on fast land, because the shoreline eventually eroded up to it. Both parties had “vested rights” to an ambulatory littoral boundary. The U.S. Supreme Court denied review, as noted here.

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Continue Reading Cases And Links From Today’s Hawaii Land Use Conference Sessions On Coastal Issues And Water Law

11.LULHI This Thursday (January 13, 2011) I’ll be leading two sessions at the fifth Hawaii Land Use Law conference at the Ala Moana Hotel in Honolulu. This conference takes place biannually, so this is your last chance until 2013 to get updated on the hottest topics, by a stellar faculty.

My sessions will cover Coastal Issues (which includes shoreline boundary, takings, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Stop the Beach Renourishment case), and Water Issues (which will cover instream flow standards, public trust and private rights, and the Maui Water cases). The conference continues on Friday. Download the brochure here for a complete agenda.

The planning chairs, U. Hawaii Law Professor David Callies (U. Hawaii Law) and Ben Kudo (Imanaka, Kudo and Fujimoto), have assembled a talented and interesting faculty. The keynote speaker will be Professor Gideon Kanner, who will present “Taking a Critical Look at 30 Years of the Supreme Court’s …

Continue Reading There’s Still Time To Register And Attend The Fifth Hawaii Land Use Conference

Starting at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, January 12, 2011, the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in Pavsek v. Sandvold, No. 29179. In that case, the court is considering whether a complainer can circumvent the City’s enforcement procedures and the administrative appeal process by instituting an original jurisdiction lawsuit claiming that a homeowner is renting her property in violation of the City’s prohibition on rentals of less than thirty days.

We won’t be analyzing the issues or live blogging the arguments because our firm represents one of the appellees (my Damon Key partner Gregory Kugle will be arguing on Wednesday), so here’s the summary of the case from the Judiciary web site:

Plaintiff-Appellants Joseph Pavsek and Ikuyo Pavsek (the Pavseks) appeal from the final judgment entered by the Circuit Court of the First Circuit (circuit court) in favor of Defendant-Appellees Todd Sandvold, Juliana Sandvold, Kent Sather…

Continue Reading HAWICA Oral Argument: Can Complainer Avoid The Administrative Process By An Original Jurisdiction Lawsuit?

In Navajo Nation v. United States, No. 2010-5036 (Jan. 10, 2011), the U.S. Court of Federal Claims concluded that the Nation’s claim that a development moratorium resulted in a taking was barred by the six year statute of limitations.

The Nation asserted that a 1934 federal statute created a property interest in an area known as the “Bennett Freeze area,” and that the federal government took that right when it precluded the Nation from any development within the area. The facts and legal background of the case are somewhat convoluted, and you can read the opinion if you are interested, but here’s the essence of the court’s analysis:

Here, the Navajo Nation’s takings claim, if any, accrued when the United States precluded it from developing land within the Bennett Freeze area without Hopi Tribe ap-proval. This was the only governmental action that served to restrict any right the Nation…

Continue Reading Federal Circuit: Takings Claims By Navajo Nation Barred By Statute Of Limitations

What we’re reading today:

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Continue Reading Friday Round-Up: Takings Ripeness, Defining “Hawaiian” Cultural Practices, Penn Central, and Judicial Takings

Honolulu Civil Beat reports this exclusive “Obama’s Winter White House an Illegal Rental” (complete CB stories are usually behind a paywall, but they’ve posted this one in its entirety). According to the Civil Beat story:

President Barack Obama’s two-week stay at his Hawaii Winter White House was illegal under a long-standing Honolulu ban on short-term rentals.

Obama did not break the law by staying at the house, but the property owner who rented his house to the Obamas does not have the permit that would allow a stay of fewer than 30 days.

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“They were here for about two weeks, approximately, but I don’t want to get into the contractual issues,” Weinberg said. “They don’t have to rent it for 30 days but you have to leave a 30-day window. I had to make sure that during that period, either 15 days after them or 15 days…

Continue Reading Is POTUS’ Hawaiian Vacation Rental “Illegal?” Here’s Official City Policy

Received the following announcement this morning:

The US District Court, District of Hawaii, will be having a Remembrance Ceremony in honor of Judge Samuel P. King on January 3, 2011 at 3pm. The ceremony will be held in Judge Mollway’s courtroom, 4th floor, PJKK Federal Courthouse, with a reception following. The public is welcome to attend.

Judge King

, an iconic figure in Hawaii legal circles, passed away in early December. The Hawaii PBS station in rerunning a profile of Judge King on January 4, 2011.
Continue Reading January 3, 2011: US District Court Remembrance For Judge Samuel P. King