Here’s one that’s not a land use case, but since it involves procedural due process, is one that you land-usey types might find worthwhile.
Minton v. Quintal, No. SCWC-11-0000317 (Dec. 13, 2013) involved a claim by two stagehands at Honolulu’s Neil S. Blaisdell Center, owned and operated by the City and County of Honolulu.
Sidebar: perhaps the NBC’s primary claim-to-fame is that it was the venue for Elvis’ Aloha From Hawaii concert in 1973. The NBC’s second best claim-to-fame is that is was the venue where we sat for the Hawaii bar examination back in the day.
But back to our story. The two stagehands had a series of run-ins with actor-singer Nephi Hanemann during rehersals for a benefit concert. So far, a dust up of this sort would not be terribly noteworthy, or result in a lawsuit. But Nephi Hannemann’s brother is Mufi Hannemann, who was at the time, the Mayor of the City and County. And the Mayor himself was scheduled to perform at the benefit concert. Fast forward to the concert, and as the Supreme Court opinion describes it, there were problems with the sound and other things.
After an “investigation” by the City (yes, really), the two stagehands were summarily banned from working at NBC and other city-owned facilities. More background on the case here from Civil Beat, in case you do not want to wade through the minutiae of the facts recounted in the opinion. Short story: the blackballed stagehands sued, claiming among other things a violation of their due process rights. They asserted the City should have afforded them notice and a hearing before it deprived them of their liberty, because they were effectively put of out work. After a jury-waived trial, the court concluded that the stagehands had no rights protected by the due process clause:
[I]t is clear that Plaintiffs have no constitutionally-protected right, no contract-based right, no city, state or federal statutory right, nor any other cognizable legal right or entitlement to ply their chosen profession as stage/theater workers at City-owned venues.
Slip op. at 37. The stagehands appealed to the Intermediate Court of Appeals, raising “thirty points of error” (wow, that’s a lot of error, man). The ICA
Minton v. Quintal, No. SCWC-11-0000317 (Haw. Dec. 13, 2013)