September 2011

For anyone who deals with state, municipal, and local government law, here’s a must-follow blog: The Municipal Minute, produced by our ABA State & Local Government Law Section colleague (and fellow U. Hawaii Law alum) Julie A. Tappendorf. Julie is a partner in the Chicago office Ancel Glink, and practices local government, land use, economic development, and zoning litigation, and is a frequent author and speaker.

Posts to date include “Hiring Experts in Land Use Cases,” “Tweeting into Trouble” (the upsides and downsides to social media use by local governments and officials), and “New Law Authorizes Zoning Hearing Procedural Rules.”

We’ve added it to our blogroll, and you should too. Continue Reading New Law Blog Worth Following: The Municipal Minute (Local Government Law)

Little-pink-house

As we noted earlier, Little Pink House, Jeff Benedict’s book about the Kelo v. City of New London case, looks like it is going to become a TV movie. Mr. Benedict writes:

On Monday my publisher will officially announce that Lifetime is making a movie based on Little Pink House, and Brooke Shields, who is currently on Broadway playing Morticia in The Adams Family, will star in the film as Susette Kelo.

Congratulations, Jeff … but come on Hollywood: even though you disregarded our choice for the lead role, there’s still time to cast the supporting players!

Discover more of the backstory on how he came to write the book, and how Ms. Kelo’s story will transition from the page to the screen here. Continue Reading The Kelo Story Coming Soon To The Screen

As we’ve noted, the Hawaii State Bar Association recently approved the formation of a new Section, devoted to Appellate Law. My Damon Key colleague Rebecca Copeland who is honchoing the formation and initial organization of the Section, sends this invitation to the first “Meet & Greet” to anyone interested in either joining the Section or finding out more.

So come down to the Hawaii Supreme Court Conference Room and Courtroom on Friday, September 30, 2011 from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. RSVP to Rebecca here.

As Jack Lord used to say, “Be there, Aloha.”

HSBA Appellate Section InvitationContinue Reading HSBA’s New Appellate Section: Come Join Us For Our “Meet & Greet” At The Supreme Court

“Property rights” often are portrayed as belonging only to the rich and powerful and protecting only the politically connected. But as we recently were reminded, this is a very inaccurate picture because property rights — as the “guardian of every other right” — form the foundation on which all other rights rest, and are “civil rights” that benefit everyone.

If we needed any more reminding, the U.S. Department of Justice recently filed a complaint in the Northern District of Ilinois against the City of Joliet under the Fair Housing Act after the City condemned an apartment complex in which 96% of the residents are African-American. The City claims it needed to take the property for “redevelopment” to alleviate blight. According to the DOJ’s press release:

The complaint, filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that the city of Joliet…

Continue Reading The “Bad Old Days” – Feds Sue City For Eminent Domain Abuse

Worth reading: “Six Years of Separation: Life After Kelo” by Ethan Friedman, posted on Miller Starr’s web site. Mr. Friedman writes about the state of affairs in eminent domain at the macro level, noting the reactions in state legislatures and the US House of Representatives’ current consideration of the “Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2011.” (You might think that having express protection for private property rights in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments might be sufficient, but apparently Congress thinks we need a statute.)

The article also references our pending cert petition in County of Hawaii v. C&J Coupe Family Ltd. P’ship, No. 11-75 (filed July 14, 2011):

However, the Supreme Court had a vastly different makeup in 2005 than it does today. The new Supreme Court, with Justices Alito, Roberts and Sotomayor, and without Justices Stevens, Breyer and O’Connor, was recently asked to consider a…

Continue Reading “Life After Kelo” – A Summary Of the Current State Of Eminent Domain Policy

ABA_SLGMark your calendars: as part of the Fall Meeting of the ABA’s Section of State & Local Government Law in Tucson, on Thursday, September 22, I’ll be on a panel discussing the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan, “Ethical Considerations for Municipal Attorneys: Caught in the Crosshairs Reconciling the Rules of Professional Conduct with Government Ethics Laws.” Here’s what we’ll be discussing:

This CLE is a panel discussion of the recent United States Supreme Court opinion Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan. At the heart of this case is how far a State may go in policing public officials who face a potential conflict of interest in conducting government business. The panel will discuss the case, the ruling, its ethical implications and questions still to be answered.

Joining me in the discussion will be Yvonne M. Nevarez-Goodson (Commission Counsel and one of…

Continue Reading Seminar: Ethics, Government Conflicts Of Interest, And The First Amendment

Thanks to the good folks at Volokh and Gideon’s Trumpet for alerting us to the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion in a case we’ve been following, but somehow slipped by, Texas Rice Land Partners, Ltd. v. Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, LLC, No. 09-0901 (April 19, 2011).

Texas, like many other states, delegates the power of eminent domain to certain utlilities (Hawaii even delegates the power to “irrigation corporations”). Under a Texas statute, Tex. Nat. Res. Code § 111.002, a pipline company may take property to transport carbon dioxide “to or for the public for hire.” A dispute arose between a property owner and a pipeline company when the owner objected to the taking of its property for a pipeline, claiming that there was no evidence that the pipeline would be used by the public to transport CO2. The pipeline company asserted it met the definition of “common carrier”…

Continue Reading Texas: “Common Carrier” Claim Subject To Actual Judicial Review

They say as you get older, you begin to forget birthdays (I know it’s true for me). So I guess it should not be surprising that August 31 passed without fanfare, and only today did I remember that five years ago I uploaded the first posts on this blog.

In law blog years, that’s quite a while.

If you can’t already tell by the nearly 1,500 items posted in the intervening time, I enjoy doing this. Even even though it can be a lot of work, it’s rewarding. Mostly because of the readers, subscribers, and contributors whom this blog has allowed me to meet and get to know. 

Because doing this in a vacuum would not be worthwhile, I’d like to recognize my fellow-travelers — those other law bloggers who, like me, make the time to share thoughts about the legal issues of the day. Although you’re not…

Continue Reading Entering Our Sixth Year

There’s been yet another cert petition asking the Suprme Court to revist and discard the ripeness rules of Williamson County Regional Planning Comm’n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172 (1985).

In Colony Cove Properties, LLC v. City of Carson, 640 F.3d 948 (9th Cir. 2011), the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a property owner’s claim that the city’s mobilehome rent control ordinance is a taking. The district court dismissed the facial takings claim because it was filed outside the statute of limitations, and the as-applied takings challenge as unripe.

The property owners’ petition poses these Questions Presented:

This case involves a regulatory takings claim brought under the Fifth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s dismissal of the claim, holding that Petitioner is required to seek a remedy for the taking through the California state…

Continue Reading The Latest Cert Petition Seeking To Overrule Williamson County