November 2015

The latest news in a fast-moving election law case, about the validity of a Hawaiians-only election to choose delegates to a constitutional convention about the issue of Hawaiian national sovereignty: this morning, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy issued this order which temporarily puts a stop to the counting of the ballots. An extraordinary move, but one …

The headline of this post is clickbait, of course, since the California Court of Appeal didn’t formally file an amicus brief in favor of the government in Property Reserve, Inc. v. Dep’t of Water Resources, No. S217738, a case now pending in the California Supreme Court. But the court’s opinion in Young’s Market Co. …

In 1989, agents of the Libyan government blew up a plane of civilians, killing 170 passengers and crew. Victims’ families brought suit against the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in U.S. District Court in D.C. for damages, and after winning summary judgment, the court entered judgments totaling approximately $1.3 billion. Libya appealed to the…

Here’s a fascinating decision from the Ninth Circuit on our other area of interest, election law. 

Public Integrity Alliance, Inc. v. City of Tucson, No. 15-16142 (9th Cir. Nov. 10, 2015) was a challenge to Tucson’s unusual hybrid system of electing the city council. The primary election is a partisan primary, limited to residents…

A quick one from the Georgia Court of Appeals. In Fincher Road Investments, LLLP v. City of Canton, No. A15A1290 (Nov. 13, 2015), the court held that a condemnee was entitled to recover attorneys’ fees and costs when the condemnor abandoned a taking, and was entitled to recover just compensation for the temporary cloud…

Here’s the recently-published brochure with more details about the ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation LItigation conference, set for Austin in January 2016. 

In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be posting more details about the conference. Our co-planning chairs Joe Waldo, Jack Sperber, and Andrew Brigham have assembled a great agenda, taught by …

Here’s the amicus brief we filed today on behalf of our Owners’ Counsel of America colleagues in Livingston v. Frank, No. 15-470 (cert. petition filed Oct. 9, 2015). That’s the case in which the Florida District Court of Appeal held that the interest generated by quick-take deposits is not the private property of…

Those of you who represent property owners on the business end of eminent domain who practice in Florida and the few other states which allow recovery of attorneys’ fees, consider yourselves lucky: the rest of us poor slobs who practice in places where they are not permitted — either as a component of a constitutional…

“Waikiki” means a lot of things to a lot of people. With its wall-to-wall high rises, it could be Las Vegas-by-the-Sea. Or the site of the most famous beach in Hawaii, if not the world. A place where impossibly tony shops and kitsch exist side-by-side. Where the “Hawaiian” bric-a-brac is imported from the Phillipines and…