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Here’s the Honolulu Star-Advertiser latest story on the Honolulu rail authority’s condemnation of the property of Blood Bank of Hawaii, “Blood bank sues over city push to take land for rail.” 

The state’s lone blood supplier is pushing back in court against the city’s efforts to acquire the land fronting its Dillingham Boulevard offices for rail.

In a countersuit filed Thursday, the Blood Bank of Hawaii accuses the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation of acting “in bad faith” and “recklessly subjecting Hawaii’s blood supply to grave but unnecessary risks.”

It further questions the benefit of taking the parcel when the city still lacks the funds to build the full 20-mile line to Ala Moana Center.

Full details here, in our Answer and Counterclaim. 

Blood Bank Counterclaim by Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Scribd

Continue Reading Not Satisfied With Merely Taking Land For Rail, Now The City Wants Blood

Honolulu Civil Beat has an interesting editorial today about the Honolulu rail project, the 20-station, 21-mile elevated steel-on-steel project now being built at a cost that was first projected at about $3.8 billion, and at last count is somewhere in the $8 – $11 billion range.

The editorial, “Honolulu Rail: City Needs To Get It Together Or Give It Up,” posits that the “perpetually beleaguered rail project is still at least $2 billion short,” and “the absence of any decisive leadership … leav[es] taxpayers on ‘a never ending hook.'” The City, the piece argues, needs to get its act together, because the people, “are by no means past the point of no return,” and substantially modifying, or even killing the project and rebooting should not be ruled out.  

In our opinion, none of that will happen. Now that we are past the recent election — yet another…

Continue Reading Rickrolling Rail

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We were in the neighborhood recently, so our Canadian colleague Shane Rayman suggested we pay a visit to the site of the largest expropriation (taking) of land in that country’s history, and what has been described as “the largest population displacement … since the 18th-century expulsion of the Acadians from the Maritimes.” 

We’re talking about Montreal’s Mirabel International Airport, located about an hour north of the city.

You’ve flown into Montreal and don’t know this airport, you say? Well, here’s the (short) story and some pictures. For the longer tale, start with the wikipedia entry, the hit up these news reports:

In the 1960’s, Montreal was booming. It was Canada’s…

Continue Reading “A Total Disaster From Start To Finish” – Expropriation And Economic Development, Canadian Style

Here’s what we’re reading this Monday:

  • Preview of SCOTUS oral arguments in Murr v. Wisconsin. This is the “larger parcel” case which will be heard next Monday, March 20. The Cato Institute is having a session on it at its DC facility, “Rethinking Regulatory Takings.” If you can’t be there in-person, it will be live streamed. More here. We’ll have our own preview later this week. 
  • Our colleagues at the Massachusetts Land Use Monitor comes this report (“Regulatory Taking, Anyone?“) about a recent jury verdict which concluded that denial of a variance resulted in a loss of all beneficial use of property. And you know what that means, don’t you? 
  • Professor Ilya Somin writes about the “Potential pitfalls of building Trump’s Great Wall of eminent domain” in the Washington Post. 
  • Professor Gerald S. Dickinson adds his thoughts on the Wall:

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Continue Reading Monday Links: Murr SCOTUS Preview, Mass. Reg Takings Verdict, Great Wall Of America, Train Takings

Here’s an article, recently published by the Urban Lawyer (the law review produced by our ABA section, the Section of State and Local Government Law), with our take on the most interesting and important eminent domain and takings rulings from the past year. 

Many of the cases discussed will be familiar to regular readers, but here it is in one place, and in print. 

Recent Developments in Eminent Domain, 48 Urb. Lawyer 939 (2016)

Related articles
New Article: “Eminent Domain in The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina”
New Law Review Article Worth Reading: “Through a Glass Clearly: Predicting the Future in Land Use Takings Law”

Continue Reading New Article: Recent Developments In Eminent Domain

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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

Following up on our post earlier this week with our amicus brief, here are the remainder of the briefs filed in the Federal Circuit in a case in which the government is asking the court to bypass panel hearing and go straight to en banc review of a Court of Federal Claims opinion which held that the owners of a railroad easement which was converted to a recreational path are owed $900 in just compensation, plus EAJA fees. 

Why all this sturm und drang (as the Federal Circuit once characterized rails-to-trails cases) over 900 bucks?

As we wrote in our earlier post, this is the government’s attempt to wipe out established regulatory takings doctrine and get the Federal Circuit to effectively overrule its prior decisions holding the government liable for physical takings when it prevents reversion of the railroad easement to private owners when those easements are no longer…

Continue Reading More Briefs In En Banc “Hail Mary” Asking Fed Cir To Abandon Decades Of Rails-To-Trails Rulings

HSBA 2017 Land Use Conference

Registration is now open for the 2017 Hawaii Land Use Conference, presented by the Hawaii State Bar Association and the University of Hawaii Law School, at the downtown Honolulu YWCA’s Fuller Hall on January 19-20, 2017. “This 2 day conference is a must attend for any attorney or professional whose practice involves land use and development,” as the registration web site says (we agree).  

Topics include the latest in Transit-Oriented Development, the Thirty Meter Telescope, GMO (including the recent rulings from the Ninth Circuit), and the topic we’ll be presenting, “Takings: Regulatory and Physical.”

The final agenda has not yet been released, but if experience is any guide, Planning Chair Professor David Callies will put together two days of timely topics, presented by distinguished faculty. 

And the cost can’t be beat: $200 for members of the Real Property and Financial Services Section and government lawyers, $300…

Continue Reading 2017 Hawaii Land Use Law Conference, January 19-20, 2017