A short one, but one worth noting. In Howard v. United States, No 09-575L (CFC Aug. 1, 2012), the U.S. Court of Federal Claims once again rejected the government’s too-clever-by-half argument in a railbanking case.
Thanks to colleague Thor Hearne for the heads-up on this decision.
Florida land use and environmental law attorney Jake Cremer has posted the Brief in Opposition in Koontz v. St. Johs River Water Management Dist., No. 11-1447 (cert. petition filed May 30, 2012), the case asking whether the Nollan/Dolan nexus and proportionality tests apply to a land-use exaction that takes the form
If actor John Cusack is in favor of using eminent domain to condemn underwater mortgages, who are we to be naysayers? In light of his support, we’ll just have to revisit our earlier skepticism.
After all, he was awarded the Medal of Honor, you know.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is well known to people in Hawaii, or at least should be. After all, he penned the majority opinion in Rice v. Cayetano, 529 U.S. 495 (2009), the decision invalidating Native Hawaiian-only voting for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state agency whose mission is to “protect
When a Hawaii Supreme Court opinion starts off like this one, waxing poetic about “Na Wai Eha, or ‘the four great waters of Maui,'” you don’t need to read the remaining 88 pages to know what the inevitable result will be: the Water Commission got it wrong, again.
That’s the end result of the
Today’s American Banker has a story on the latest development in the let’s-use-eminent-domain-to-take-underwater-mortgages scheme: the Federal Housing Finance Agency has sent a strong shot across the bow of local governments contemplating such a move (e.g., San Bernadino, Chicago, even Berkeley):
Uh, don’t.
Full statement here, or below. The American Banker story
Check this out, our latest law-related fun project.
Our firm is sponsoring (along with the Honolulu Museum of Art) a legal film series in September. We’re showing six legal films: Crime After Crime, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Castle (for that eminent domain connection, naturally), Counsellor at Law, and Anatomy of
For those of you sticking around Chicago after the ABA Annual Meeting, there’s the opportunity for even more land use, zoning, takings, and condemnation programming. ALI-CLE (fka ALI-ABA) is putting on it’s annual Land Use Institute later this week. It looks like Planning Co-Chairs Gideon Kanner and Frank Schnidman have put together a wide-ranging
This past week was the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago. These things can often be endurance contests where you’re rushing from one meeting to another (is this the Executive Committee meeting or the Council meeting?), and it’s often hard to tell the players without a scorecard.
Sprinkled among these unexciting-but-productive sessions are the real meat
