Attorneys Fees & Costs

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When we previewed the 2017 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference while we were getting buried in the snow a couple of weeks ago, we promised there would be better weather in San Diego than much of the country was then experiencing. As you can see, we delivered.

We — and by “we” I mean the faculty, the ALI-CLE staff, and the record number of attendees who came to San Diego — also delivered on a really great conference. See our posts on several of the presentations here, here, here, and here for a flavor.

We also announced that the date and location for the 2018 Conference has been set, and the hotel and site have been booked:

2018 ALI-CLE
Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference
Francis Marion Hotel
Charleston, South Carolina
January 25-27, 2018

Stay tuned for details. Send your ideas for…

Continue Reading 2017 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain Conference Wrap, 2018 Venue Announcement

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Our final day was anchored, as usual, by Pacific Legal Foundation’s Jim Burling, and property rights guru and advocate Michael Berger. Jim was his usual riveting self, and Michael supplied the insight to cases which only he can.

In case you are wondering, the above is the view from the dais, and no, I didn’t bring a Spam calendar with me, it was a gift from a thoughtful New Jersey colleague who knows that Hawaii people love Spam. I will reserve comment on whether I love Spam, and simply say thank you for the calendar. 

We finished the day strong with the National Forum, where audience members took the mic and shared their cases, issues, and results with the rest of us. 

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Continue Reading Links & Materials From Day 3 Of ALI-CLE Eminent Domain And Land Valuation Litigation Conference, San Diego

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Here are the links and references to the cases we spoke about today at our opening session on the national trends in eminent domain law at the 2017 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference in San Diego. 

We again have a record attendance, and a good number of new attendees. If you aren’t here now, we’re sorry you didn’t make it. But fear not: ALI-CLE has already set the date and location for the 2018 Conference: save the date on your calendars now — January 25-27, 2018, Charleston, South Carolina, at the Francis Marion Hotel. 

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Continue Reading Day 1, 2017 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain And Land Valuation Litigation Conference, San Diego

Here’s the amici brief we’re filing in a case which we told you about earlier, involving the way attorneys’ fees get calculated when a statute allows fee shifting. 

This is the afterglow of a rails-to-trails takings case, in which the property owners are entitled under the Uniform Relocation Act to attorneys’ fees. We like. 

What we didn’t like was the way the trial court arbitrarily cut the property owners’ fee request, without ever explaining why. The court simply made an across-the-board percentage reduction from the “lodestar” (a reasonable hourly rate times a reasonable time per task). And the Federal Circuit affirmed. 

So the property owners sought cert review, and now we’ve filed a brief in support. Our brief focuses on the first Question Presented: “Whether trial courts have discretion to make across-the-board percentage adjustments to the lodestar fee and, if so, what “specific proof” or “explanation” must the…

Continue Reading SCOTUS Amicus Brief: Court Can’t Arbitrarily Reduce A Lawyer’s “Stock In Trade”

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 ALI2017

We’ve teased some of the details on the 2017 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation and Condemnation 101 Conference, to be held at the Westin San Diego, January 26-28, 2017, but here are the details you’ve been waiting for.

This is the “big one,” our annual 3-day festival of all things eminent domain, property, takings, inverse condemnation, and just compensation. Truly national in scope, this is the 34th annual edition, and the one conference you must attend. Our 2016 conference in Austin was one of the best in years, and we’re on the way to replicating it in 2017, with a great venue in an exciting city. 

Look for the web and printed brochures to show up in your mailboxes, but in the meantime, here are some of the highlights (we’ll post more in the next few days):

  • Relocation, relocation, relocation: we are featuring two sessions on this

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Continue Reading Details: ALI-CLE Eminent Domain And Land Valuation Conference – San Diego, January 26-28, 2017

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During. Good crowd.

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Before. Note the power strips on the tables.
Well played, Caesar’s, well played.

To supplement your written materials, here are the decisions and other materials which we spoke about this morning at the CLE International Eminent Domain seminar:

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Continue Reading Links And Notes From Today’s Las Vegas Eminent Domain Seminar

On one hand, we don’t care for attorneys’ fee fights. They are satellite litigation, almost always after the merits have been resolved. They can get tedious (does anyone like going over years of timesheets and billing records, and haggling over whether a motion should have reasonably taken 1 hour or 5 hours?), many judges don’t really like fee requests (even where the law requires fee shifting), and some judges are not really tuned in to the real-world financial realities of funding litigation and believe their job is to cut down fee requests to whatever level the judge thinks is acceptable. It can be a remarkably capricious process. 

On the other hand, however, these things are obviously vitally important, and really worth the tedium. In many jurisdictions, (Hawaii, for example), property owners in eminent domain or inverse cases generally cannot recover attorneys’ fees and costs, either as part of just compensation…

Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Does The Court Have To Say Why (And How) It Cuts Down A Property Owner’s Attorney Fee Recovery?

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In today’s per curiam opinion in Wiesenberg v. University of Hawaii, No. SCWC-15-0000711 (June 30, 2016), the Hawaii Supreme Court clarified a point of appellate procedure that has been unnecessarily vague — and therefore dangerous — for a while: whether a trial court’s entry of an amended judgment, entered after the filing of a post-judgment order, resets the time for an appellant to file her notice of appeal. The Supreme Court was reviewing an order by the Intermediate Court of Appeals dismissing an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the appellant missed the filing deadline.

If, like us, you rejoice in these type of issues, read on. 

Like we’ve said before, jurisdictional deadlines like notices of appeal are the kind of things that keep we lawyers awake at night. In the past, appellate filing deadlines caused you at times to have to sprint down to the Appellate Clerk’s office…

Continue Reading HAWSCT Clarifies When An Amended Trial Court Judgment Restarts The Appeal Window

Wilson-road

With apologies to Professor Kanner (who regularly features a “Lowball Watch” on his blog), we offer this report of Down v. Ministry of Transportation, No. LC140038 (May 12, 2016), a trial-level property owner victory by our Toronto colleague Shane Rayman (last seen in the pages of this blog winning a great case in the Supreme Court of Canada). We’ve been meaning to post the decision for a while, but got caught up in other things. We probably should have waited at least another couple of days for Canada Day, but oh well.

But before we get into today’s case, we want to digress a bit with this bit of Canadiana. Or at least our one story about that True North strong and free, that played into every one of our preconceptions.

Many years ago, while living in New York City, we got the bright idea one dark…

Continue Reading Lowball Watch: That’s A Lot Of Bucks, Even If They’re Canadian Dollars

The Pribeagus asserted the County’s failure to maintain a road caused their home to be flooded repeated. They sued in inverse condemnation, including in their suit a claim for damages both to their real property and their personal property. 

The trial court kept the Pribeagus from introducing evidence of the value of the personal property, believing that such damages are not recoverable in inverse condemnation, and the only thing an owner can recover is damage to real property. 

In Pribegeau v. Gwinnett County, No.A15A2026 (Apr. 13, 2016), the Georgia Court of Appeals disagreed, concluding that the term “property” is the Georgia Constitution “is a very comprehensive one, and is used not only to signify things real and personal owned, but to designate the right of ownership and that which is subject to be owned and enjoyed.” Slip op. at 7 (citation omitted). So yes, personal property is “property” and…

Continue Reading Ga App: Owners Can Recover Personal Property In Inverse Condemnation Action