October 2011

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A note to our Mainland colleagues: when next you are called to Hawaii on business, if you emulate His Georgeness, you can’t go wrong.

In our Bishop Street Fashion Guide, we commented upon the unwritten rules for the unique haberdashery in Honolulu, and what is considered appropriate business wear for lawyers when not appearing in court.

In that vein, the recent showing of The Descendants featuring Geo. Clooney at the Hawaii International Film Festival is an example of how to play it right down the center: a reverse print, button-down, half-placket, no-poly aloha shirt, most likely of the Reyn Spooner variety. Tucked in for the formal look, or untucked for the casual Friday look or pau hana time.

However the film is otherwise in the accuracy department, we can say this: the technical advisor and the wardrobe department got it 100% right. Clooney dresses like a Hawaii businessman.Continue Reading Clooney Sports The Aloha Shirt…Like A Boss!

Here’s the latest in the lengthy West Linn Corporate Park tale from Oregon. After having bounced from federal court, to the Oregon state courts, then back to federal court, the case is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The issue in the case is whether the Ninth Circuit was correct when it held in an unpublished memorandum opinion that “[t]he Supreme Court has not extended Nollan and Dolan beyond situations in which the government requires a dedication of private real property. See Lingle v. Chevron USA, Inc., 844 U.S. 528, 547 (2005). We decline to do so here.” Slip op. at 4-5.

Weak, Ninth Circuit, weak. Is the issue of whether Nollan and Dolan‘s nexus and rough proportionality requirements apply only to exactions of land — but do not govern exactions of other types of property such as money — so settled that you blow…

Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Are Nollan And Dolan Limited To Exactions Of Land?

Yosemite_conference Here are the links to the cases and other items discussed today at the session Regulatory Takings – Looking Back and Looking Forward at the Cal State Bar’s Environmental Law Section’s Environmental Law Conference at Yosemite.

These cases are also in your written materials.

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Continue Reading Links From “Regulatory Takings: Looking Back And Looking Forward” (Cal. State Bar Yosemite Conference)

Earlier, we posted Justice Scalia’s assertion at a recent conference that Kelo ranked among the top all-time blown calls by the Supreme Court. While the Kelo majority opinion is decidedly foul, does it really sink to the level of Dred Scott, the opinion in which the Court concluded that Africans could never be U.S. citizens?

Well, one writer doesn’t think so. In the Atlantic, Garrett Epps writes “Can Eminent Domain Be as Bad as Slavery?” While there is much we agree with in Mr. Epps’ piece, especially his conclusion (we’re sorry, eminent domain abuse, as bad as it is, is not quite as bad as concluding that a class of people are simply incapable of being citizens because they are somehow lesser humans — that’s just repugnant), we don’t buy in wholly to his reasoning.

He outlines three reasons why Justice Scalia’s dislike of Kelo is…

Continue Reading More On Scalia, J.’s, Assertion That Kelo = Dred Scott

Cover_42_3_ The Urban Lawyer, the law review produced by the ABA Section of State & Local Goverment Law has published my article Recent Developments in Condemnation Law: Public Use, Private Property, 43 Urban Lawyer 877 (2011).

The article “summarizes recent cases in which the issue was the power of condemnors to take property, including challenges under the Public Use Clause, as well as other challenges on the power to take” (from the Introduction).

This volume of The Urban Lawyer contains this and other articles with updates on environmental law, regulatory takings, land use and zoning, and municipal bond financing. For those of you who are SLG Section members, your copy is undoubtedly in the mail, and the pdf version will soon be available on the Section’s web site. For those of you who are not Section members you get a freebie, at least of my article.

If you are…

Continue Reading New Article – Recent Developments in Condemnation Law: Public Use, Private Property

The Pacific Legal Foundation, the Cato Institute, Professor Paul M. Sullivan, The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, and the Goldwater Institute have filed this amicus brief, supporting the cert petition filed last month in Corboy v. Louie, No. 11-336 (cert. petition filed Sep. 15, 2011).

That’s the case seeking SCOTUS review of the Hawaii Supreme Court’s opinion concluding that challengers to the property tax exemptions conferred on lessees of Hawaiian Homesteads lacked standing. Only “native Hawaiians” are eligible to lease homestead land, and thus only those possessing the appropriate blood quantum are entitled to the tax exemptions, and the Hawaii court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, holding the petitioners lacked standing to challenge the exemption since they had not sought homestead leases (leases for which they were ineligible because they are not native Hawaiians).

The petition asks this question:

Whether the Hawaii courts erred in failing to recognize…

Continue Reading Amicus Brief In Hawaii SCOTUS Case: Is Hawaiian Homes Property Tax Exemption Racial Discrimination?

The Supreme court has declined review of Colony Cove Properties, LLC v. City of Carson, 640 F.3d 948 (9th Cir. 2011), the case in which 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 cert petition asked the Court to overrule Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172 (1985), the source of the Court’s oft-maligned ripeness doctrine in regulatory takings. This was another in a recent in a series of petitions (see here and here for two others) asking the Court to revisit Williamson County, and we’ve criticized the case and its ripeness rules as illogical, unfair, and not the result of a…

Continue Reading Williamson County Still Lives: Cert Denied In Colony Cove

Here’s what we are reading this Thursday:

  • Appeals Court Declines Invitation To Destroy Land Use Law As We Know It – from the Massachusetts Land Use Monitor blog: “Now that the Appeals Court has reminded us of the permanence of permit conditions, anyone who receives a permit with a restrictive condition should think twice about whether that condition is a proper exercise of municipal authority, or whether an appeal should be taken in an effort to modify or strike a condition that will otherwise burden the land for time immemorial.”
  • The ‘Public Uses’ of Eminent Domain: History and Policy – (hat tip to PropertyProf blog for the heads-up) – “This paper examines the effects and implications of the ‘public use’ requirement for the exercise of eminent domain in the United States. It is part of an ongoing inquiry the consequences of eminent domain in the United States. The first part examines the history

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Continue Reading Thursday Links: Public Use, Mass Court Saves Land Use, Judicial Takings

According to the ABA Journal, Justice Antonin Scalia said this:

Justice Antonin Scalia predicted Monday that the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London will be overturned.

Speaking to students at the Chicago-Kent School of Law, Scalia criticized the decision allowing the city of New London to use eminent domain to seize property for economic development, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. “I do not think that the Kelo opinion is long for this world,” Scalia said.

Scalia ranked Kelo among the top cases in which the court made a mistake of political judgment, according to the Sun-Times account. The others were the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision in favor of a slave owner and the Roe v. Wade decision finding a constitutional right to abortion.

“My court has, by my lights, made many mistakes of law during its distinguished two centuries of existence,” Scalia said. “But it…

Continue Reading Scalia: Kelo = Dred Scott = Roe

Save the date: on Thursday, December 1, 2011 (1:00pm-2:30pm EST, 10:00am-11:30am PST) we’ll be presenting the on-line seminar “Eminent Domain: Redevelopment Challenges for Local Governnment – Navigating Federal Funding Requirements, Challenges for Public Utilities in Right-of-Way Projects, and Objections to Taking for Public Use.“

Joining me are colleagues Anthony Della Pelle (McKirdy & Riskin – New Jersey), J. Casey Pipes (Helmsing, Leach, Herlong, Newman & Rose – Alabama), Rick E. Rayl and Bradford Kuhn (Nossaman – California), and Mark M. Murakami (Damon Key Leong Kupchak Hastert – Hawaii).

Each member of the faculty should be well-known to our readers: Tony publishes the New Jersey Condemnation Law blog and is a frequent speaker at the annual ALI-ABA eminent domain program. Casey is with the Owners’ Counsel member firm from Alabama and Co-Chair of the ABA Litigation Section’s Condemnation, Land Use, and Zoning Law Committee. Rick and Brad produce…

Continue Reading Upcoming National Webinar – Eminent Domain: Redevelopment Challenges for Local Government