Here’s a year-end summary of “Notable Eminent Domain and Inverse Condemnation Cases from 2017 (and one from 2018)” from Wendel Rosen Black & Dean’s Money and Dirt blog.
Check it out.Continue Reading Important 2017 California Eminent Domain And Inverse Cases, Summarized
Our upcoming American Law Institute-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference in Charleston, South Carolina has SOLD OUT our in-person registrations.
We will have a record attendance (with over 100 first-time attendees) and the conference hotel has informed us that we can fit no more people in the meeting rooms. We cannot remember this happening before, but it tells us that we will have an energizing and exciting conference.
Thank you to all of you who signed up and are coming or joining in online for the webcast — we’ll see you soon at the “four corners of the law.”
And if you delayed too long in registering, please don’t despair. You can still attend from home or the office because ALI has set up a live webcast of the sessions. Go here for more on how to sign up to attend by webcast.
And stay
Stewart Yerton, a reporter at Honolulu Civil Beat but also a lawyer, has posted a report about an ongoing eminent domain case in which the State of Hawaii’s Attorney General is condemning a one-acre parcel on the south shore of Maui, property which the State had been leasing on a long-term 30-year lease. The above video is an aerial view of the property and its surrounding area. My firm represents the property owner in the case.
The report’s headline asks “Is This Maui Landowner Getting A Raw Deal From The State?“
In 2013, after nearly 20 years of leasing the property, the AG condemned the land because, in the words of one of his deputies, the lease “has not been great for the state.” (The State thought it was paying too much in rent.)
The AG’s initial condemnation appraisal concluded the highest and best use of the
Here’s the first post-Murr cert petition (as far as we can tell), in a case we’ve been following. As we wrote in “The First Post-Murr Case? Fourth Circuit: No Taking Because Anti-Development Merger Regulations Actually Make Property Developable,” the Fourth Circuit concluded:
[T]he County’s regulations were run-of-the-mill zoning/land use ordinances, and thus were not a taking, nor violations of the related substantive due process and equal protection claims. Because the County had no obligation to extend sewer services to the plaintiff’s parcels, he had no property interest that was taken by the development prohibition.
The court rejected the owner’s attempt to distinguish Murr. He pointed out that he purchased his property before the restrictive regulations were adopted, and not afterwards like the Murr children. See Murr, 137 S. Ct. at 1945 (“the “expectations . . . an acquirer of land must acknowledge legitimate restrictions affecting
What to make of this? A blog aimed at condemning authorities, with advice on how to avoid a claim for precondemnation damages. Okay, nothing wrong with that. Condemnors deserve good legal counsel as much as other parties. Indeed, having inexperienced counsel for the condemnor often makes resolving cases harder than it should be.
But check this out, a recent post entitled “Practice Tip to Avoid the Potential for Precondemnation Damages,” which notes (in its entirety):
This is a practice tip to avoid the potential for precondemnation damages. In all project documents, refer to future land acquisitions in noncommittal, tentative, conditional language.
Examples:
Project maps showing required acquisitions should be referred
Two items from land use guru Lawprof Daniel Mandelker:
Continue Reading New Resource, New Book (The Law of the Fourteenth Amendment)
35th Annual Advanced Course
Eminent Domain and
Land Valuation Litigation
Live Program | Video Webcast | Video Webcast Segments
Thursday – Saturday, January 25 – 27, 2018
Francis Marion Hotel | Charleston, SC
Do not miss this popular conference! Intended for all eminent domain and land use practitioners, both experienced and those new to the practice. You can even customize the unique curriculum to work for you: freely go between the Advanced and 101 tracks, with additional tracks for Practice and Substantive law.
With a faculty of national experts who offer both condemnor and property owner perspectives, this is the big program, and the one you don’t want to miss.
Recognized and experienced professionals representing the diverse stakeholders in these cases will discuss the issues hitting your desk today or in the future, including:
As we reported earlier (“Mississippi: Statute That Says No Private Takings For Access Within City Limits Means Just That“), as in many other states, in Mississippi, a private property owner may institute eminent domain proceedings to take a neighbor’s land when doing so is necessary for a landlocked parcel to gain ingress and egress. In that case, the Mississippi Supreme Court held that the requirements of the statute must be adhered to by a private condemnor, and invalidated the taking.
But the court rejected the owner’s request for attorneys’ fees as part of the appeal because the statute provides that these costs are recoverable “in a separate action.”
After the court issued its opinion, the property owner sought attorneys’ fees under a separate statute in the eminent domain code, but the special court concluded the statute didn’t apply because the Supreme Court “has made it abundantly clear that
Continue Reading Private Condemnor Liable For Attorneys Fees When Condemnation For Access Road Fails
A recent report in Honolulu Civil Beat asks the question: “Why Isn’t Honolulu Helping Businesses Hurt By Rail Construction?” (The Civil Beat editorial board asks the same question.)
According to the report:
Two years ago, the Honolulu City Council created a fund to help businesses hurt by construction of the 20-mile long rail project. But there was a hitch: the council never appropriated any money for it.
Then last April, the council put a line item in the budget for fiscal year 2018, which began July 1 and ends June 30, offering $2 million in property tax breaks to businesses suffering losses from work on the rail line.
With five months left to go in the fiscal year and no effort to distribute those tax breaks, that offer is looking like an empty promise.
The Civil Beat story continues with reports of failing businesses, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid
Here’s the amici brief filed earlier this week in Sammons v. United States, No. 17-795, a case we’ve been following. Here’s the cert petition.
The issue in this case is the same as in two cases already pending in the Supreme Court, the first a patent case argued in December, and the other a rails-to-trails case in which the cert petition is pending (we filed an amicus brief in the latter case).
Now, we’ve joined a brief in Sammons which argues that like these two cases, this one presents the same issues:
This petition for certiorari concerns essentially the same issues raised in Oil States and Brott.
In Oil States this Court will decide whether an adjudication before an Article I tribunal “violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury.” In Oil States a non-Article III board invalidated an
Continue Reading New Amici Brief: Of Juries And Article III Courts – Required In Takings Cases?
