April 2016

When you raise 13 issues on appeal, you shouldn’t be surprised if the court balks at analyzing them all. That was the case in City of Gulfport v. Dedeaux Utility Co., No. 2014-CA-00556-SCT (Mar. 24, 2016), where the Mississippi Supreme Court didn’t address the majority of the points raised by the city on appeal, but narrowed down the list to five. And of those five, the court found error in only one. 

You can slog through the details in the court’s opinion, but let’s see if we can’t give you the highlights.

Most of the issues raised on appeal were the result of the city’s delay in actually taking possession of Dedeaux, a PUC-regulated utility. The city waited eight years after it filed the taking action to do so. The city filed its condemnation action in 1996, but did not physically take possession until 2004, after the eminent…

Continue Reading “Interesting” Eminent Domain Opinion: No Evidence Of Jury Compromise Verdict In City’s Taking Of Utility

Early next month, the California Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases which we’ve been closely following:

  • Tuesday, May 3, 2016, 9:00 am – Property Reserve, Inc. v. Superior Court, No. S217738. The court is considering whether California’s “entry statute” which allows a condemning agency to enter property for testing and inspection exempted the Department of Water Resources from adhering to the protections in the eminent domain code when the government physically invades property. We filed an amicus brief in that case arguing that “any non-trivial physical invasion of private property is a per se taking requiring just compensation and adherence to eminent domain procedures. The intrusions sought by DWR and ordered by the Superior Court cannot be dismissed as mere “entries.” This is not only a long-standing tenet of California constitutional law (see Jacobsen, supra, 192 Cal. at 329), it is a baseline Fifth Amendment principle, and

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Continue Reading Big Eminent Domain Days Coming Up At The California Supreme Court

Who must may be counted for reapportionment purposes?

Everyone!

A slight detour from our usual fare, to post some thoughts about today’s big  U.S. Supreme Court opinion on election law in Evenwel v. Abbott, No. 14-940. Evenwel is the sleeper case of the Term, and opened the possibility that the we might finally get an answer to a question the Supreme Court has dodged for over fifty years, involving the seemingly mundane issue of who can states count when they reapportion their legislatures: All Census-counted residents? U.S. citizens? Those eligible to vote? And who must they count? 

In today’s ruling the Court didn’t cast the net wide, but instead (as we urged it to do in our amicus brief) drew a narrow rule: states may count everyone, but they are not required to. Thus, Texas’s plan, and the plans of those states which count total population…

Continue Reading Mantras Without Meanings (We Takings Lawyers Predicted This One) – 8-0 SCOTUS Rules States May Count Everyone In Reapportionment

The only issue in Caffe Ribs, Inc. v. Texas, No. 14-0193 (Apr. 1, 2016) was whether the jury could hear evidence proffered by the property owner that the delay in cleaning up the land to make it marketable could have been attributable to the government. The trial court said no, and the court of appeals affirmed.

The Texas Supreme Court disagreed: “We hold that the trial court’s exclusion was an abuse of discretion, and further hold that the exclusion was harmful because it allowed the government to use an eight-year holding period to reduce the property’s value without allowing the jury to consider the role the government played in creating that holding period.” slip op. at 2.

The court’s opinion is a quick read and we recommend you digest the entire thing. But here’s the short version. Caffe purchased the property, which was already contaminated, and began its voluntary remediation efforts…

Continue Reading Government’s Role In Delay In Cleanup Of Contaminated Property Admissible In Eminent Domain Case

Earlier this week, we posted our visit to the site of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hadacheck v. Sebastian, 239 U.S. 394 (1915). It’s been over 100 years since that case was decided by the Court, but to Hinga Mbogo, the Dallas auto mechanic profiled in the above video from the Institute for Justice, 2016 sure must seem like 1915.

The more things change…

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The Eminent Domain Angle In Today’s Not-Eminent-Domain Supreme Court Decision
USVI: No Appellate Jurisdiction For Quick-Take Ruling Until Eminent Domain Judgment Finalized

Continue Reading Hadacheck Revisited: The More Things Stay The Same Dep’t…

In most cases — as you can probably tell — we’re rooting for the property owner. But there are some cases where we’re okay with suspending our usual predilections. The case which resulted in the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s opinion in Dani v. Miller, No. 114482 (Mar. 29, 2016) is one of those. 

It’s a long opinion (39 pages), way longer than the issues deserved. But for some reason, the court addressed each of the plaintiff’s challenges to Oklahoma’s unclaimed property statute. All over a grand total of $169.56. Actually, it wasn’t even over this amount, because the plaintiff was able to claim it from the state:

Plaintiff/Appellant Robert N. Dani (Appellant) is an Oklahoma resident and taxpayer. Certain property belonging to Appellant was handed over to the State Treasurer pursuant to the Uniform Unclaimed Property Act (UUPA), 60 O.S. §§ 651-688, because it was presumed abandoned. The property consisted of $19.56, received…

Continue Reading State’s Failure To Pay Interest On $169.56 Of Abandoned Property Isn’t A Taking