Public Use | Kelo

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The Land Use Institute, a program that for many years has been planned by co-chairs Frank Schnidman and Gideon Kanner, has found a new home with the American Bar Association’s Section of State and Local Government Law as the main sponsor. It also has a new Planning co-chair, Dean Patty Salkin of Touro Law School, who has stepped in for Professor Kanner.

This program is designed for attorneys, professional planners, and government officials involved in land use planning, zoning, permitting, property development, conservation and environmental protection, and related litigation. It not only addresses and analyzes the state-of-the-art efforts by government to manage land use and development, but also presents the key issues faced by property owners and developers in obtaining necessary governmental approvals.

This year, the one-day program is being held in conjunction with the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago. It will be held on Thursday, July 30, 2015…

Continue Reading Land Use Institute: Planning, Regulation, Litigation, Eminent Domain, and Compensation – 31st Annual Conference, Chicago, July 30, 2015

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The hotel reservations link for the 2016 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation and Condemnation 101 Conference is now live.

Reserve your hotel room now, via this link to ensure that you have a spot in the conference hotel. [note: link updated 7/8/2015]

We’re still working on the agenda and faculty, but here are the details thus far:

Date: January 28-30, 2016 (Thursday – Saturday)

Location: Hotel Van Zandt, Austin Texas

The Hotel Van Zandt is a new hotel (not even opened as of the date of this post), but our Austin sources tell us that it’s centrally located, close to everything that Austin is known for. More about the annual conferences — the premiere CLE programming on the subject, in our opinion — here. 

Stay tuned for more information. We’ll continue to keep you posted, and when the registration page at ALI-CLE is up and ready to…

Continue Reading 2016 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain Conference, Austin: Hotel Now Taking Reservations

Attend any talk by a judge which includes legal writing tips, and there’s sure to be this one: keep it as short as is necessary to make your points. Justice Kennedy’s remark that “I never read a brief I couldn’t put down in the middle” and Chief Justice Roberts noting “I can’t recall ever being sorry to see a brief end,” for example. Good advice. But what judges may not realize is that it is very often a two way street, and we consumers of judicial opinions also appreciate brevity. (With the exception of opinions in cases we win; in those circumstances, please do drone on Your Honors.) 

Well, here’s one that is somewhat lengthy at 49 pages, but is the exception to the rule and that we think more than a few readers will enjoy for their weekend reading: the concurring opinion in a case decided …

Continue Reading Worth Reading: An “Economic Liberty” Decision From The Texas Supreme Court, With Lessons For Eminent Domain

In case you somehow missed it, takings junkies, today, June 23, 2015, is the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s excreable 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), and just about anyone who is anyone in our field has weighed in with a retrospective. We don’t have much to add, since wiser minds than ours have some very cogent thoughts.

But here’s how we view the decision, ten years on:

  • Still stinks. A decade has not lessened the odor.
  • We filed an amicus brief in Kelo explaining why economic development wasn’t enough to support New London’s taking of a perfectly good home, and we still think we’re right. 
  • Many states and local jurisdictions reacted and adopted legislative reforms. Some helpful, many not. Guess which state did nothing, despite several proposals made over several legislative sessions? Hawaii, where we say we like the little

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Continue Reading Kelo At 10: Still Stinks, And A Decade Has Not Lessened The Odor

Update: here’s more Horne talk, in addition to our own initial thoughts in the above video and this post (“Magna Raisins: 8-1 SCOTUS Says There’s A Taking, But Not All Agree On Remedy“):

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Continue Reading Raisin Round-Up

Hardly seems like a decade ago that the Supreme Court gave us eminent domain lawyers something to talk about at cocktail parties: the Court’s infamous and widely-hated decision in Kelo v. City of New London. 

Find out about what the intervening ten years has brought us from the Cato Institute, which is sponsoring a program later this week  about “Property Rights on the 10th Anniversary of Kelo v. City of New London.” 

Featuring Ilya Somin, Author, The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain, and Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law; Scott Bullock, Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice and Plaintiffs’ Counsel, Kelo v. City of New LondonKelo v. City of New London

The full agenda and registration information is here. If you can’t be in D.C. this week, you can watch the conference live…

Continue Reading Upcoming Conference On Kelo’s 10th Anniversary

BfB Full from rumur on Vimeo.

Those of you who have followed the blog for a while know that we’re big fans of the documentary film about the Atlantic Yards eminent domain fight in New York, “Battle for Brooklyn.” See our review here, for example.

If you haven’t had a chance to see it, or just want to see it again, the filmmakers have made it available for streaming.

No spoiler alert because you already know the result of that case. But as we wrote in our review on why the film is very worthwhile, “Battle For Brooklyn explains why property owners fight the taking of their homes and businesses, even when that fight is uphill.” 

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Continue Reading Eminent Domain Docfilm “Battle For Brooklyn” Now Streaming

In a case we’ve been following, the Kentucky Court of Appeals has affirmed a trial court ruling which held that a pipeline company could not exercise the power of eminent domain. 

The Bluegrass Pipeline is a 1,100+ mile private pipeline that would deliver natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations to the Gulf Coast. It is planned to run through 13 Kentucky counties, although there are no “offramps” for the natural gas actually in Kentucky. 

In Bluegrass Pipeline Co., LLC v. Kentuckians United to Restrain Eminent Domain, No. 2014-CA-000517 (May 22, 2015), the Court of Appeals concluded that the pipeline company did not have eminent domain power because it was not regulated by the Public Service Commission, and therefore was not “in public service” as required by Kentucky eminent domain statutes. See Ky. Rev. Stat. § 278.502 (“Any corporation or partnership organized for the purpose of ……

Continue Reading To But Not Through: Bluegrass Pipeline Must Be PUC-Regulated For The Benefit Of Kentucky Consumers To Use Eminent Domain

Even though it is a trial court decision, the opinion in Township of Readington v. Solberg Aviation Co., No. HNT-L-486-06 (May 4, 2015), is well worth reading, because we think the judge gets the process for how courts evaluate claims of pretext correct. 

We posted about this case a few years ago, after the Appellate Division remanded the case with instructions to the trial court to take an objective view of the Township’s claim that the taking of Solberg’s airport was to preserve open space, and not, as Solberg claimed, to thwart Solberg’s plans to expand its facilities and to allow the Township to take control of the enterprise.

The trial court did so, and after a long bench trial, it concluded:

In fine, an objective scrutiny of the collective testimony of the elected officials involved in the architecture and implementation of the eminent domain ordinance concerning the SHA…

Continue Reading NJ Trial Court Finds Open Space Taking Pretextual: “objective scrutiny of the…testimony of the elected officials…reveals a studied attempt to obscure the true purpose of the condemnors”

If you have plans to be in Wisconsin or environs in June, the Wisconsin chapter of the Appraisal Institute is putting on its 12th annual Condemnation Appraisal Symposium at the Marquette Law School on Wednesday, June 3, 2015.

One of the featured speakers is Mike Berger on “Current National Eminent Domain Issues,” and there will also be presentations about power to take challenges, and thorny appraisal issues, among others.

Here’s the description from the event flyer:

The Condemnation Appraisal Symposium is the go-to event of the year for those real estate and legal professionals who are currently engaged, or who wish to be more involved, in eminent domain matters. This high-level program provides the latest information and open debate on condemnation case law, appraisal techniques and other timely topics presented by attorneys, appraisers, educators, and government officials, while again offering valuable networking opportunities with those practitioners active in this specialty…

Continue Reading Upcoming Wisconsin Appraisal And Eminent Domain Law Conference