In a segment called “Are the Courts Crazy?,” (their title, not ours!), Kelii Akina and I chat about the recent decisions in the Thirty Meter Telescope case, the pig hunting as a traditional and customary native Hawaiian practice case, Hawaii’s new Environmental Court, and the challenge to the Hawaiians-only election which is currently being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court (the one in which Dr. Akina is the lead plaintiff).
And rest assured: we concluded that no, the courts are not crazy.
We’re now only a bit more than two weeks away from the 2016 Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation – Condemnation 101 Conference, which runs from January 28-30, 2016, in Austin, Texas.
As we’ve noted here earlier, we think that this is going to be a fantastic conference that will cover a lot of ground, and the hot topics of the day. Here’s the full agenda for the program. If you are not familiar with the conference or have not attended recently, we’ve undergone some formatting changes lately, but are still bringing the best faculty and topics to bear. Here’s a summary of last year’s San Francisco conference, to give you an idea of how we’ve updated the programs, while keeping the best elements and traditions unchanged.
This is the first time the conference has been held in Austin, and thus far, the registration figures are doing exceedingly
When people think of “Hawaii,” many of them, me included, think of sugar. Those of us of a certain vintage who were raised in the islands, and whose families were tied to the sugar plantations once so ubiquitous (my mother’s family was from the Halawa Plantation and lived on what is now the site of Aloha Stadium), share a certain nostalgia for those days.
But things inevitably change, and most of the sugar and pineapple plantations (ask me about my pre-law days working at “the cannery,” a now-defunct summertime ritual for many local kids) are long-gone, save one, Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar’s Puunene plantation on Maui.
Earlier this week the other shoe dropped, and HSC’s parent company, Alexander and Baldwin, announced that at the end of the year, Hawaii’s sole remaining sugar plantation will be closed. There are a lot of reasons — labor costs
Continue Reading Lawsuits Have Consequences: Aloha To Hawaii Sugar
Nai Aupuni and the Akamai Foundation, the proponents and organizers of the Native Hawaiians-only “Oprah” election for delegates to a convention to organize a new Hawaiian government, have responded to the election objectors’ SCOTUS motion for contempt.
The Motion for Civil Contempt asked the Supreme Court to slap the State, the Governor, OHA and its trustees, and Nai Aupuni, for violating the Court’s earlier injunction that no ballots were to be counted, and the results were not to be certified prior to a ruling on the merits by the Ninth Circuit. After the Court’s order, Nai Aupuni called off the election (after previously extending the deadline by three weeks), and promised to never, never, never count the ballots that had already been submitted. Nai Aupuni then invited all of the (former) candidates to attend the convention.
The contempt motion argued that this was too clever by half, and asserted that
We’ve been tied up with other things the past few days, so haven’t had a chance to do much posting, but here’s something to tide you over, a piece from Florida colleague Jacob Cremer, “Why Exactions Law Should Bring Property Rights Advocates Cheer in the New Year.”
Land use and takings mavens, rejoice.
If you want a crash course in Hawaii’s unique (some would say weird) water law, you can’t do better than this video from Think Tech Hawaii, an interview with an old water hand, lawyer William Tam.
While he definitely has a perspective (one that, in our view, downplays the role of private property and private rights), you can’t get a better insider primer on the history of the legal battles over Hawaii water that have taken place over the years, and the current state of the law.
One question we’ve always had about the public trust doctrine as applied to Hawaii water resources: if all water is publicly owned, why aren’t people who use catchment systems to capture and store rainwater for their own use getting hit up for wrongly appropriating public water?
An interesting post at Honolulu journalist Ian Lind’s blog, “City’s explanation of discrepancies in real property tax assessments don’t satisfy,” commenting on a recent piece in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about the City and County of Honolulu’s method for appraising residences for property tax purposes (“Home price, taxable value can diverge“).
If appraisal of real property is more art than science, then appraisal of property for property tax purposes is more like graffiti than art.Continue Reading City’s “Mass Valuation” For Property Taxes
Here’s a good one from the Ohio Court of Appeals to start off your 2016.
In State ex rel Greenacres Foundation v. City of Cincinnati, No. C-150038 (Dec. 30, 2015), the court agreed that the City’s failure to issue a demolition permit for the “Gamble House,” which the City claimed was a property worthy of historic preservation but had not yet so designated, was a taking.
The Gamble House was built by the “Gamble” in Proctor & Gamble, the guy who invented Ivory Soap. But over the years, the house “had been uninhabited since 1961, had suffered extensive water and termite damage, and was infested by mice, birds, raccoons, squirrels, and bats.” So the current owners asked the city for a demolition permit so they could redevelop the property.
The city said no, and ran the owners through a maze, with several appeals through the usual administrative procedures.
