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Continue Reading Monday Readings: South Africa Takings, Redevelopment, Metes and Bounds, And More

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We’re in Detroit the rest of the week at the Mercy Law School for the venerable Land Use Institute, now in its 32nd iteration.

Planning Chair Frank Schnidman has assembled a great faculty including out Detroit colleague Alan Ackerman (above, talking about takings liability for flooding), and we’ll be spending the time talking inverse condemnation, public trust, planning law, homelessness, autonomous vehicles, affordable housing, RULIPA, and similar topics. We’ll be presenting on “Eminent Domain, Vested Rights, and Regulatory Takings,” “Client Representation: Developer, Government, and Citizens Groups,” and “Federal Laws Affecting Local Land Use Decision Making.” 

If you are here with us in Detroit, stop by and say hello. If you aren’t here, shame on you! This is one of the best and most affordable tuition deals in CLE.

But all kidding aside, if you are not in Detroit now, be sure to calendar these…

Continue Reading Land Use Institute – Detroit

Space is filling up, but there’s still time to join us later this month in Detroit for the 32nd Annual Land Use Institute (April-19-20). 

We’ll let program Planning Chair Frank Schnidman explain all the reasons why, and we’ll add only these points: (1) it’s a very good program that won’t take much of your time (fly in for the Thursday afternoon program, stay a night, fly home on Friday evening); (2) Detroit is the place to be these days; and (3) it’s one of the best deals in CLE credits, with tuition as low as $400.

2018 Land Use Institute Brochure Detroit 5 2018

Continue Reading There’s Still Time To Join Us In Detroit: 32d Annual Land Use Institute

We don’t usually post up trial court rulings, preferring to wait until the issue percolates up through the food chain. But this one is an exception, because, well, it’s darned interesting, and we wanted to get you all on board on the ground floor.

Here’s the trial court’s order granting the plaintiffs/property owners summary judgment in the case challenging the City of Seattle’s “first in time” ordinance, under which the city established the criteria for screening tenants, and required property owners to accept the first qualified applicant as a tenant.  The city acknowledged that the ordinance “affects a landlord’s ability to exercise discretion when deciding between potential tenants that may be based on factors unrelated to whether a potential tenant is a member of a protected class.” Slip op. at 2-3. The goal was to “eliminat[e] the role of implicit bias.”

In short, because a property owner might have an…

Continue Reading Seattle’s “First in Time” Tenant Rule Is A Taking

Here’s the cert petition in a case we’ve been following out of the Tenth Circuit involving an attempt by a private utility company to take property which is now partly tribal land.

In Public Service Co. of New Mexico v. Barboan, 857 F.3d 1101 (10th Cir. 2017), there wasn’t a question that a federal statute prohibited a utility company from taking “tribal land.” The big issue was what land fell within that definition. 

The Navajo Nation owns undivided fractional interests in two parcels which a utility claimed it needed for a electric transmission line. The land earlier had been “allotted” to individual owners, who are treated like fee owners except for certain restrictions on alienation. This land is no long tribal land or part of any reservation, and under a federal statute, allotted land is subject to an exercise of eminent domain:

Lands allotted in severalty to Indians…

Continue Reading Cert Petition: Is Land Only Partly Owned By A Tribe Immune From Eminent Domain?

We always were glad biology prevented us from hearing what others were thinking. Because if we were able to know what people really thought, we might not like each other very much. 

Well, the internet — Twitter in particular — has broken through the biology and given us that opportunity, all in 160+ characters. The crazy is strong with this one.

But you can learn stuff on Twitter. Stuff like the author of the Con Law treatise you used in law school is kinda … out there, for example. 

But despite Twitter’s notoriously low signal-to-noise ratio, Sheldon Gilbert, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, is someone you really should follow on Twitter. Sheldon’s tweets with the hashtag #courtinghistory are gems which make wading into the Twitter swamp worthwhile. In a series of tweets, he walks through some of the most important and interesting Supreme Court cases, focusing on…

Continue Reading On This Day: Midkiff SCOTUS Arguments, Tweeted

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Here’s the printable brochure with the details on the 32nd Annual Land Use Institute in Detroit, April 19-20, 2018. We’ve plugged the program before so we won’t do so again, except to say that you really should attend because (1) it’s a very good program that won’t take much of your time (fly in for the Thursday afternoon program, stay a night, fly home on Friday evening); (2) Detroit is the place to be these days; and (3) it’s one of the best deals in CLE credits, with tuition as low as $400.

2018 Land Use Institute Brochure Detroit 5 2018

Continue Reading April 19-20, 2018: Land Use Institute, Detroit (Printable Brochure)

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In Bayberry Cove Children’s Land Trust v. Town of Steuben, No. Was-17-258 (Feb. 27, 2018), the Maine Supreme Judicial Court considered whether the Town’s exercise of eminent domain to take an interest to a road the public had apparently been using for decades (if not centuries) was for public use.

A 2013 survey, however, concluded that a part of the road “strayed outside the the bounds of the right of way as laid out by the Town in 1825, 1887 and 1944.” Slip op. at 3. The Trust, which owned the land on which that portion of the road was located, filed a quiet title action. In response, the voters of the Town, in a Town meeting (how very New England of them), rejected the Trust’s offer to pay the Town $150,000 in return for “discontinuing the road” (we presume that means discontinuing the public use of the…

Continue Reading Maine: Condemnation To Wipe Out Quiet Title Action Is A Taking For Public Use

2018 LUI header Detroit-1

Mark your calendars, plan to come: Detroit, April 19-20, 2018. For what is perhaps the best deal in CLE (tuition as low as $400), the 32d Annual Land Use Institute, sponsored by our section of the ABA, the Section of State and Local Government Law.

The venue is the Detroit Mercy School of Law, and the conference hotel is the historic Westin Book Cadillac in downtown Detroit. The Land Use Institute is being held in conjunction with the Section’s Spring State and Local Law Conference. Register for one conference, and you are free to move between sessions (no additional registration fees).

Planning Chairs Frank Schnidman and Dean Patrica Salkin have assembled an excellent faculty and program for the two days. Topics include: “Nuts and Bolts of Land Use Practice: Vested Rights and Regulatory Takings,” “Public-Private Partnerships,” “Climate Change and Resilient Development,” “Client…

Continue Reading 32nd Annual Land Use Institute: Detroit, April 19-20, 2018