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If you are within striking distance of Madison next month, consider attending the “Property Rights and Land Use in Wisconsin” symposium at the U. Wisconsin Law School. 

This is a one-day conference, and as you might expect, one of the big focuses of the day will be the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Murr v. Wisconsin. The speakers will also cover legislative developments, as well as the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision in McKee v. Fitchburg (which reminds us to get this opinion out of our queue and onto the blog, which we will do shortly). 

Register here (a very modest $100 for the entire day). 

Brochure, U. Wisconsin’s “Property Rights and Land Use in Wisconsin” Symposium (July 20, 2017) 

Continue Reading U. Wisconsin Property Rights & Land Use Symposium (July 20, 2017)

After Murr, the pending cert petition in Lost Tree was D.O.A., and today, the Court made it official. Cert denied. We thought that the Federal Circuit’s denominator analysis was the better one (although pretty much anything would have been better than what Justice Kennedy and his Immortals came up with in Murr). But since Lone Tree was a property owner win in the Federal Circuit, cert denial isn’t a bad thing.

The denial also let stand the Federal Circuit’s (correct) rule that it isn’t an economically beneficial use when the only use left after a regulation is that the property may recover its value some time in the future (aka “investment value”). This blows significant holes in the government’s common argument that the regulation isn’t a wipeout or a significant loss under Penn Central, because property usually rises in value so one day, the economic impact…

Continue Reading Cert Denied In Lost Tree (Relevant Parcel)

What to make the Justice Kennedy-authored 5 justice majority opinion in Murr v. Wisconsin, No. 15-214 (June 23, 2017)? 

There, the majority adopted — maybe “created from whole cloth” would be a more accurate description — a multifactor test for determining the “larger parcel’ or “denominator” in regulatory takings cases where the owner possesses more than a single parcel of land.  We quoted the opinion’s list in this post, and won’t repeat it entirely here, but below is a short list of things that now must be considered by lower court judges (not juries) when they are deciding how much of the property the plaintiff owns can be used to measure the impact of the regulation on the parcel which she claims was taken:

  • The “treatment of land.” Yes, the actual metes-and-bounds of the legal parcel, but also, get this, the “expectations … an acquirer of land must

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Continue Reading Justice Kennedy’s Social Justice Warrior Test For Takings Clause “Property” In Murr v. Wisconsin

A small but critical mention in the cinema’s greatest closing argument (Dennis Denuto, Esq., above, in The Castle) for the Australia High Court’s decision in Mabo v. Queensland (No. 2), (1992) 175 CLR 1 (1992):

Denuto: It’s the vibe of it.

Judge: Allright, taken. Do you have a precedent which supports this … “vibe?”

Denuto: Yes, yes I do. Just one moment. [confers with client] … Mabo.

Judge: What about it?

Denuto: That’s your classic case of big business trying to take land … and they couldn’t.

Judge: Mr. Denuto, the Mabo decision pertains to the specific issue of native land title and terra nullius.

Denuto: Yeah!

Judge: So what part of the judgment is relevant to this case?

Denuto: Again … it’s just the vibe of it.

Which prompts us to note that it is the 25th anniversary of the date on which the Mabo decision was handed down…

Continue Reading “It’s the Constitution. It’s Mabo. It’s Justice…” 25 Years On For Australia’s Mabo Decision

Here’s the amici curiae brief we filed today on behalf of Owners’ Counsel of America, NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Cato Institute, and Professor David Callies in support of a cert petition which we detailed here.

The case is a regulatory takings claim, and involves wet and dry sand beaches, public trust, and other favorite topics. The case arose because the N.C. Legislature by statute moved the “public trust” shoreline landward, and allowed the public to use what had formerly been private beach.  

Here’s the Summary of Argument from our brief:

The North Carolina Court of Appeals permitted the Town of Emerald Isle (Town) to impress into public service the portion of the Nies family’s property above the mean high water mark as a road and park. North Carolina law has never subjected this dry sand to public ownership, through the public trust doctrine or otherwise.

Continue Reading SCOTUS Amicus Brief: States May Be Able To Rewrite Property Law, But They Can’t Avoid Paying For The Change

Here’s the cert petition, recently filed, which asks the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision of the North Carolina appellate courts. We say “appellate courts,” because the decision being reviewed is one from the N.C. Court of Appeals, because the N.C. Supreme Court, after granting discretionary review, punted and dismissed the appeal after it was fully briefed and teed up for oral arguments.

What happened that cause the court to dismiss? Who really knows the internals, but the one thing we do know is that some members of the court changed due to a judicial election. We know the above because we were watching the case closely; we filed an amicus brief in support of the property owner in the N.C. Supreme Court, a brief that apparently didn’t get read (not that amicus briefs get read all that frequently anyway, but you get our drift).

The case is…

Continue Reading New Regulatory Takings Cert Petition: Legislature Can’t Simply Declare Private Property To Be Public

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Here’s what we’re reading today:

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Continue Reading Monday Reading: Pirates (Twice), Monet Land Use Pilgrimage

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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

HSBA 2017 Land Use Conference

To supplement your written materials for the 2017 Hawaii Land Use Conference, here are the decisions and other materials which we spoke about this morning at the 2017 Hawaii Land Use Conference:  

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Continue Reading Notes And Links From Today’s Hawaii Land Use Conference Session On Reg Takings

There have been a lot of takings and takings-related decisions coming out of the Court of Federal Claims lately, and we’ve held off on posting them individually. So to start off your New Year, here is a pop quiz.

Your task: guess whether the CFC held there was a taking, or no taking (answers below):

Case 1: Sheikh Djibouti 

  • Global Freight was a subcontractor providing services to a Navy base in Djibouti. The Navy ordered it to move its vehicles from the Navy base into Djiboutian territory, after which the Djiboutians seized the vehicles. Taking or no taking? 
  • Taking. Or at least not “no taking.” In Global Freight Systems, Co. v. United States, No. 15-378C (Fed. Cl. Dec. 29, 2016), the CFC denied the government’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim (which argued that it was the Djiboutians and not the U.S. which took the

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Continue Reading Court Of Federal Claims Pop Quiz: Taking Or No Taking?