August 2012

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Here are the cases and links that I discussed at today’s ABA session on eminent domain:

  • Kelo – Remember the holding of the case: the Court majority rejected the petitioners’ call to adopt a blanket rule that all takings supported only by claims of economic development violate the Public Use Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In declining to adopt the rule, the Court left open challenges based on lack of a comprehensive plan, claims that the advanced public use is a pretext to hide a predominant private purpose, and the old “A-to-B” private taking.
  • City of Stockton v. Marina Towers LLC (Cal. Ct. App. 2009) – The case in which the court held that the city’s resolution of necessity was so “nondescript [and] amorphous,” and “so vague, uncertain and sweeping in scope that it failed to specific the ‘public use’ for City sought acquisition of the property.”

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Continue Reading Resources From Today’s ABA Eminent Domain Session

We are at the ABA Annual meeting this week, so don’t have a lot of time to keep up a long-distance practice and write up comprehensive blog posts, so we’re going to keep it short.

Here’s the latest takings decision from the Federal Circuit in a case we’ve been following, Estate of Hage v. United States, No. 2011-5001 (Fed. Cir. July 26, 2012). The property owners filed their case in 1991 in the Court of Federal Claims seeking compensation for the federal government’s taking of water rights in Nevada. In 2008, the CFC ruled in favor of the property owners, but the Federal Circuit reversed on Williamson County grounds because the case wasn’t administratively ripe. The federal agency, you see, has not reached a final decision on what the property owners might do with the land, and just might issue a permit (even if other similar permit applications…

Continue Reading Federal Circuit: 22-Year Old Takings Case In Which The Landowner Is Already Dead Is Not Ripe