Schadenfreude

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Battle for Brooklyn film poster

You remember Battle for Brooklyn, the documentary which chronicles the eminent domain fight over New York’s Atlantic Yards project? (Read our review of the film here to refresh your recollection.)

Well here’s the latest chapter. Or perhaps “epilogue” is more appropriate, because the former property owners have long since been evicted, the homes have been razed, and the New Jersey Brooklyn Nets are ensconced in the Barclays Center. (The promised affordable housing and “jobs, jobs, jobs?” Eh, not so much, but who’s counting?)

According to this story in the New York Times, preservationists are planning to award the private beneficiaries of the city’s exercise of eminent domain something called the “Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal.” Seriously:

The Municipal Art Society is well known for campaigns to save Grand Central Terminal and Lever House and to stop towers that would have cast long shadows over…

Continue Reading Atlantic Yards: How About Calling It The “Jay Z” Medal?

As we predicted it would after oral argument, today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the property owner’s favor in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, No.12-1173 (Mar. 10, 2014). Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the entire Court less Justice Sotomayor, who filed a solo dissent. SCOUTSblog posts a summary of the opinon here (“Victory – and money – for landowners“). 

As you might recall, the issue in the case was whether the federal government retained an “implied reversionary interest” when it issued these patents, or whether these grants were subject only to a railroad easement. The difference is that easements may be extinguished, while reversionary interests cannot. In this case, the railway abandoned its use, after which the federal government instituted a quiet title action in federal court asserting it owned the right of way, and that it did not revert to the property…

Continue Reading SCOTUS Benchslap: Railroad Right Of Way Is An Easement, Just Like We Said A Long Time Ago

Zipler Since this is the season for self-congratulatory industry awards, we can’t overlook one of our industry’s highest honors, the Zoning and Planning Law Report Land Use Decision Awards (aka the “ZiPLeRs”). For those of you who do not subscribe to the Zoning and Planning Law Report, the “strangest, or at least more dramatic” land use cases each year are eligible for nomination for a ZiPLeR. 

Our Owners’ Counsel and ABA colleage Dwight Merriam recently announced the 2013 Awards in the December 2013 issue of ZPLR, but before he got to his tongue-in-cheek detailing of such winners as the “You Can’t Pigeonhole These Pets As An Accessory Use Award,” the “Don’t Be An Ass Award,” and “The Grinch Who Stole The Treehouse Award,” he started off with “The Koontz Corner,” a few pages on the goings-on surrounding one our favorite decisions last year, Koontz v. St. Johns Water Management District…

Continue Reading Paging Dr. Merriam, Stat: One Case Of “Koontz Catatonia”

Not only did the State win the reapportionment legal case in which it successfully argued that military personnel and their families who reside in Hawaii are not “permanent residents” and thus may be treated as outlanders and ignored for state reapportionment purposes [we represented the plaintiffs who challenged that scheme], but with the proposed defense cuts, it seems that Hawaii officials are now all worried that we might not have all those federal defense dollars flowing so readily from off-island that the large military presence in the islands brings (roughly $18 billion per year). 

It was always ironic to us that on one hand, the State of Hawaii and seemingly every Hawaii pol aggressivly lobbied for a large military presence in Hawaii in order to enjoy the money and the extra seat in Congress that Hawaii’s military population brings us, but when it came time to count these folks…

Continue Reading Looks Like Hawaii Won’t Need To Count All Those Soldiers, Sailors, And Marines In The Next Reapportionment Anyway

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I have a long-running and good-natured contest with my Owners’ Counsel and ABA colleague Dwight Merriam about who gets items of interest “fastest with the mostest.”  More than a few times has he sent me items, only to find out that we’ve already posted on the subject, or there is a post in the hopper. 

But sometimes, not only is Dwight ahead of me, he’s way in front. Today is one of those days. Dwight sends along a bill (HB 1077), now making its way through the Florida Legislature that we were not even aware of until today, but which is of great interest. The bill would prohibit Florida municipal and local governments from inserting a condition in a development permit unless the exaction is related to the “direct impact of a proposed development.”

(1) The Legislature finds that in the land use planning and permitting process, a…

Continue Reading Inverse Schadenfreude: We Are Beaten To The Punch With Florida’s Proposal To Limit Exaction Demands

DK_greenbag_1 We’ve been following the (mostly fruitless) efforts of a group called the “Save the Plastic Bag Coalition,” an association of plastic bag manufacturers and distributors, to push back against the growing tide of municipalities that have banned or otherwise highly regulated the use of bags at grocery stores and elsewhere. Despite one success story (later reversed by the California Supreme Court), it appears to us that the STPBC’s legal efforts have been quixotic (see here and here, for example). 

Add to those decisions the latest, this time from the California Court of Appeal, upholding San Francisco’s plastic bag ordinance against a challenge under CEQA (California’s environmental review law, for you offworlders), and a state law preemption challenge.

In Save the Plastic Bag Coalition v. City and County of San Francisco, No. A137056 (Dec. 10, 2013) (certified for publication Jan 3, 2014), the Court of Appeal…

Continue Reading Cal App Doesn’t Save The Plastic Bag