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ALI-CLE 2021 Bingo card

If you “get” this, you should be registered for the 38th Annual Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference, to be held remotely on Thursday and Friday, January 28-29, 2021.

The list is growing rapidly, and you need to join us!

This is the “big one” where the nation’s best practitioners, scholars, jurists, and other industry professionals gather to talk shop about the subjects we know and love. We’re having programs with intriguing subjects such as “Planning to Win: Practical Strategies for a Successful Inverse Condemnation Case,” “How Do I Keep My Firm’s Doors Open When the Courthouse Doors Are Closed? Making Your Practice More Efficient When You Can’t Try Cases,” “Where Is the Supreme Court Headed on Takings Cases? Regulatory Takings Update and Cedar Point Preview,” “No Show and All Tell: Breaking News in Property Rights and Takings,” “More Than the Fifth Amendment: Other Tools for Upholding …

Continue Reading Your 2021 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference (Jan 28-29, Remote) BINGO Card

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Are you a law student interested in takings, eminent domain, land use, environmental, and other dirt-lawyering related topics? If so, good news: thanks to the generosity of ALI-CLE, you can register gratis (free!) for the upcoming 38th Annual Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference, to be held remotely on Thursday and Friday, January 28-29, 2021.

This is the “big one” where the nation’s best practitioners, scholars, jurists, and other industry professionals gather to talk shop about the subjects we know and love. We’re having programs with intriguing subjects such as “Planning to Win: Practical Strategies for a Successful Inverse Condemnation Case,” “How Do I Keep My Firm’s Doors Open When the Courthouse Doors Are Closed? Making Your Practice More Efficient When You Can’t Try Cases,” “Where Is the Supreme Court Headed on Takings Cases? Regulatory Takings Update and Cedar Point Preview,” “No Show and All Tell: …

Continue Reading Law Students: Register Free For The 38th Annual ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference (Jan 28-29, 2021)

Our thanks to Clint Schumacher for having us on his program to talk about the upcoming Conference. We’re “remote” this year, but that means a different approach to our presentations (and a very modest tuition!).

We’re having programs with intriguing subjects such as “Planning to Win: Practical Strategies for a Successful Inverse Condemnation Case,” “How Do I Keep My Firm’s Doors Open When the Courthouse Doors Are Closed? Making Your Practice More Efficient When You Can’t Try Cases,” “Where Is the Supreme Court Headed on Takings Cases? Regulatory Takings Update and Cedar Point Preview,” “No Show and All Tell: Breaking News in Property Rights and Takings,” “More Than the Fifth Amendment: Other Tools for Upholding Property Rights,” “Evaluating Lockdown, Moratorium, and Emergency Claims,” and more (including Ethics for those of you in MCLE jurisdictions). We’ll have a post with more details. 

Register now!Continue Reading Eminent Domain Podcast’s Preview Of The Upcoming ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference

Often, the dispositive question in many takings cases tuns on whether the plaintiff owns “property,” and if so, what rights does that recognize. If you define the property in such a way that ipse dixit excludes the “stick” the owner claims was taken, then the answer is always going to be no property, no taking. To us, this is largely a question of definitions and policy: is this interest, in a judge’s view, worthy of constitutional protection?

And that’s the wrong approach, because this analysis often seems more like a semantic exercise, undertaken by the wrong party. Instead of concluding, for example, that the property in a case is a lease (a recognized property interest) and then going on to ask whether there’s been a sufficient interference with an owner’s distinct investment-backed expectations, the question shifts from what we think is the proper focus (a fact question of the impact…

Continue Reading Surf And Turf (Our Beef With The Virginia Oyster Takings Case): Although Leases Are “Property,” They Don’t Confer A Right To Exclude Government Sewage

Here’s the Reply in Support of what we think is a very worthy cert petition, and which responds to the recently-filed BIO.

For the background of the case, check out this post (“What Constitutes a Loss“). The property owner has also summarized the situation thusly in its petition:

The State of Hawaii zoned for agricultural use land that it knew was not viable or appropriate for such use. At the property owner’s request, it rezoned it for urban use but, after Plaintiff Bridge Aina Le‘a began developing it, the State illegally (as the Hawaii Supreme Court later held) “reverted” the land to agricultural use. A jury found this to be a 5th Amendment taking under this Court’s standards in both Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992) and Penn Central Transp. Co. v. City of New York, 438 U.S. 104 (1978).

Continue Reading Reply In Penn Central And Lucas Takings Case

Screenshot_2020-11-05 Legal challenges regarding COVID-19 emergency orders

Join us next Tuesday, November 10, 2020 at 3pm ET (12 noon Pacific) for the free webinar “Shutdowns, Closures, Moratoria, and Bans,” produced by Pacific Legal Foundation and Owners’ Counsel of America.

Along with my colleagues Leslie Fields (Executive Director, OCA), and Jim Burling (PLF), I’ll be talking about the legal foundations for objections, some of the cases that have made their way to decision, and what the future might look like. To register (did I mention it was free?) go here.

Here’s the program description:

Governors and state legislatures across the country have implemented an array of policies in an attempt to contain the virus and its socioeconomic impacts. Many of these policies broadened the scope of government power while placing a heavy burden on property owners and businesses already struggling with the pandemic.

Join representatives from Pacific Legal Foundation and Owners’ Counsel of America as…

Continue Reading Join Us: Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020 (3pm ET, 12n PT) For Free (!) Webinar: “Shutdowns, Closures, Moratoria, and Bans”

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In case you missed any part of it: the recordings of the recent 2020 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference are now available.

Go here for the descriptions of the panels, speakers, and links to the recorded sessions.

This year’s conference, held on October 1-2, opened with the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize being awarded to Professor Henry E. Smith of Harvard Law School. The prize is named in honor of the lifetime contributions of Toby Prince Brigham, founding partner of Brigham Moore, LLP, and Gideon Kanner, professor of law emeritus at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, and is presented annually to a scholar, practitioner or jurist whose work affirms the fundamental importance of property rights.

Topics covered: “Where Theory Meets Practice: A Tribute to Henry E. Smith,” “The Housing Crisis,” “Emerging Issues in Takings and Eminent Domain Law,” “The Reach of Government’s Confiscatory Powers over Exigencies and Emergencies,” and “The…

Continue Reading Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Videos Now Available

We all know that despite the heightened Twombly/Iqbal federal pleadings standard, that it doesn’t mean a whole lot if a complaint survives a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. All this means that the court thinks it is plausible that the complaint states a claim. And that the plaintiff gets to keep going. That’s it.

But when takings claims are involved, we also know that courts can be dismissive, and a property owner surviving a motion to dismiss can be kind of a big deal.

In Hunters Capital LLC v. City of Seattle, No. C20-983 (Oct. 16, 2020), the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed the plaintiffs’ equal protection claims, but held that the procedural and substantive due process, and takings claims survived. This is the case on which we posted earlier, in which property owners in the part of Seattle known as CHOP (or…

Continue Reading Federal Court: If It’s True That Seattle Provided Material Support To CHOP/CHAZ, That Could Be A Taking

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We have looked through the entire judicial and scholarly oeuvre of SCOTUS nominee Judge Amy Barrett, who today is continuing to run the gauntlet of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Naturally, our scanners were searching for any of her decisions or writings that might give us some clue how a “Justice Barrett” might treat takings and property cases, should she make the squad.

Frankly, however, there isn’t much to hold onto. As our colleagues Bryan Wenter (“What Might Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett Mean to Property Rights?“) and Mike Ryan (“7th Circuit Rules Construction of the Obama Presidential Center Is Not A Taking Under The Fifth Amendment“) have covered, there’s just one opinion she authored or joined in which takings was on the docket: a recent decision about the challenge to the Obama Center being erected in a Chicago public park, Protect Our Parks, Inc v. …

Continue Reading “Fidelity to the law means going where it leads, and sometimes it leads to the conclusion that a law is unconstitutional.” What Might A “Justice Barrett” Portend For Property Cases?