Regulatory takings

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The Supreme Court’s multiple opinions in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Fla. Dep’t of Envt’l Protection, 130 S. Ct. 2592 (2010), although unanimous in concluding that the Florida Supreme Court’s decison was not a judicial taking, were not the last words on the subject. Six justices concluded that in the right circumstances, a decision by a state supreme court would violate the takings or due process clauses, while the remaining two justices concluded that some future case might be the right vehicle to decide whether a court decision could take property.  

Our suspicions that the case marked the opening of the judicial takings canon and not its closing were quickly confirmed. Last week, we posted this cert petition in another beach case from Hawaii that draws the takings question more precisely than Stop the Beach Renourishment, and earlier we asked “Why Isn’t This A ‘Judicial Taking?’…

Continue Reading New Cert Petition: More Judicial Takings, This Time From Montana

The Federalist Society has published an assessment of the Washington Supreme Court’s approach to state constitutional law, and to us the most interesting part is the first section on property rights in the Evergreen State.

Michael Bindas, David K. DeWolf & Michael J. Reitz, The Washington Supreme Court and the State Constitution: A 2010 Assessment (July 2010 ).

For the latest from the Washington Supreme Court on property rights, see Proctor v. Huntington, No. 82326-0 (Aug. 19, 2010), in which a 5-4 majority of the court solved an encroachment problem by ordering the encroached-upon landowner to sell his land to his encroaching neighbor. We asked “Why Isn’t This A ‘Judicial Taking?’“Continue Reading Federalist Society On The Washington Supreme Court’s Approach To Property Rights

Check it out: the William and Mary Property Rights Project and the Institute of the Bill of Rights Law will present the 7th Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference on September 30 to October 1, 2010. The recipient of this year’s prize is lawprof Carol M. Rose (U. Arizona).

More information, including a link to registration information here, from the Owners’ Counsel of America blog.
Continue Reading Upcoming Conference: 7th Annual Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference (9/30)

The littoral property owners who won a partial victory in the Hawaii appellate courts have filed this cert petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision of the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals which concluded that ownership of beachfront property includes only a partial right to accreted land. In Maunalua Bay Beach Ohana 28 v. State of Hawaii, 122 Haw. 34, 222 P.3d 441 (Haw. Ct. App. 2009), the ICA held that held that “Act 73” (codifed here and here), the statute in which the legislature simply redefined accretion as public propertywas a taking, but accepted the State’s argument that Act 73 did not affect a taking of what it called “future” accretion, because the right is simply a contingent future interest.

In Act 73, the Hawaii Legislature changed over a century of common law and declared that title to shoreline land naturally accreted cannot…

Continue Reading Cert Petition In Hawaii Beach Takings Case: Is The Right To Accretion A “Property” Interest?

Last week, we filed an amicus brief in United States v. Tohono O’odham Nation, No. 09-846, (cert. granted Apr. 19, 2010). Why is a case involving the Indian Tucker Act and the technicalities of the Court of Federal Claims’ subject matter jurisdiction showing up in the pages of this blog? In addition to being a fascinating case, a claimed limitation on the CFC’s jurisdiction is of interest to anyone who follows regulatory takings actions against the federal goverment, as the brief makes clear.

For more than a century, the federal government has held substantial funds and 2.9 million acres of land in Arizona in trust for the Tohono O’odham Nation. In United States v. Tohono O’odham Nation, No. 09-846, (cert. granted Apr. 19, 2010), the Supreme Court is considering whether the Court of Federal Claims has jurisdiction over the the Nation’s claim against the federal government for…

Continue Reading Amicus Brief In Supreme Court Case On Court Of Federal Claims Jurisdiction

Worth listening: this LexisNexis podcast. Details:

On this edition, Michael Allan Wolf, Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law at the Levin College of Law, University of Florida, discusses what real estate practitioners can learn from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida DEP and what it suggests about policies affecting the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Topics include avulsion, accretion, and the possibility of “judicial taking.”

Continue Reading Podcast On The Judicial Takings Case (Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Fla. Dep’t of Envt’l Protection)

You may have missed the live program, but it’s still not too late to get the podcast of a recent discussion of Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dep’t of Environmental Protection, No. 08-11 (June 17, 2010), the Supreme Court case about judicial takings and beachfront property. Here’s the course description from ALI-ABA:

In an unusual takings case, Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Florida Supreme Court relied on state real property law to conclude that the objecting beachfront property owners lacked a valid property right, and thus the state could “renourish” the beaches. The beachfront owners appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to recognize a new doctrine of judicial takings.

On June 17, 2010, the Supreme Court issued its opinion, which may be a partial victory for property-rights advocates. Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito all endorsed the idea that…

Continue Reading Another Podcast On The Judicial Takings Case (Stop The Beach Renourishment v. Florida)

We like creative lawyering. We really, really do. After all, we like to think of ourselves as creative lawyers. But sometimes, you wish your colleagues would keep their ardor for seeing a “taking” in every situation in check, because by raising — and losing, badly — these marginal claims, they lessen tolerance for more serious takings challenges, and make proving substantial claims more difficult.

So appears to us the case of Bala v. North Dakota, No. 20090312 (Aug. 23, 2010), in which the North Dakota Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal for failure to state a claim of a number of takings challenges to the state and federal governments’ enforcement actions against a horse racing enterprise that — oops! — missed about 10 million in excise tax payments. Here’s the fact summary from the opinion:

In 2003, state and federal authorities began investigating RSI’s account wagering activities. The State, through…

Continue Reading North Dakota SCT: Gov’t Seizure A Function Of Police And Tax Power, Not Eminent Domain

Courts have equitable powers to fashion remedies that the law may not account for, but does a state’s judicial power stretch so far as to allow it to order a property owner to sell an acre of property (at fair market value) to a neighbor who had built an encroaching structure over the property line due to the erroneous words of a surveyor, even though the neighbor could not prove adverse possession or any other theory that would entitle its building to continue to encroach?

In Proctor v. Huntington, No. 82326-0 (Aug. 19, 2010), a deeply divided (5-4) Washington Supreme Court held that even though the encroaching property owner was not entitled to adversely possess the property, the court would order an appraisal of the property, and force the owner to sell it. Our thanks to the Supreme Court of Washington Blog and to our colleagues at the Eminent…

Continue Reading Why Isn’t This A “Judicial Taking?” Washington Supreme Court Orders Property Owner To Sell To Neighbor

My Damon Key colleagues Mark Murakami and Tred Eyerly and I have posted our forthcoming essay Of Woodchucks and Prune Yards: A View of Judicial Takings From the Trenches on SSRN here, containing our thoughts on Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dep’t of Environmental Protection, No. 08-11 (June 17, 2010), the “judicial takings” case. Mark, Tred, and I filed an amicus brief supporting the property owners in the case.

Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction to the article:

Justice Breyer must either (a) grapple with the artificial question of what would constitute a judicial taking if there were such a thing as a judicial taking (reminiscent of the perplexing question how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?), or (b) answer in the negative what he considers to be the “unnecessary” constitutional question whether there is such a thing as a…

Continue Reading Of Woodchucks and Prune Yards: A View of Judicial Takings From the Trenches