In West Virginia, mineral rights can be owned separately from the surface estate. Not that unusual; something we learned in the first year of law school, in Property I. You might assume that condemning agencies’ lawyers in West Virginia and similar jurisdictions understand this, and counsel their clients accordingly.
Or maybe not, once you…
A short one from the Kansas Supreme Court. In Neighbor v. Westar Energy, Inc., No. 111972 (May, 8, 2015), the court concluded that Kansas’ “savings statute,” which allows a party in certain circumstances to refile a lawsuit that had been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice within six months, applied to eminent domain cases.
The details…
Our American Bar Association colleague Ed Thomas (no relation, although we often joke that we’re probably cousins), the President of the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association and a guy who acknowledges that the need to protect against natural disasters must take property rights into account, has compiled some thoughts about the Court of Federal Claims’ recent…
Even though it is a trial court decision, the opinion in Township of Readington v. Solberg Aviation Co., No. HNT-L-486-06 (May 4, 2015), is well worth reading, because we think the judge gets the process for how courts evaluate claims of pretext correct.
We posted about this case a few years ago, after the…
A long opinion (73 pages) from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in St. Bernard Parish Gov’t v. United States, No. 05-1119L (May 1. 2015), and it is worth reading in its entirety (there are even photos and maps embedded). But here’s the short version:
In Arkansas Game & Fish, the United States…
Remember Dunn v. City of Milwaukie? That’s the case in which the Oregon Supreme Court reversed an inverse condemnation judgment in favor of a homeowner who had sewage back up into her house after the city “hydrocleaned” the sewer system, because she had not shown that the government had “acquisitory intent.”
The court, however…
If you have plans to be in Wisconsin or environs in June, the Wisconsin chapter of the Appraisal Institute is putting on its 12th annual Condemnation Appraisal Symposium at the Marquette Law School on Wednesday, June 3, 2015.
One of the featured speakers is Mike Berger on “Current National Eminent Domain Issues,” and there will…
We were all ready to write up the California Court of Appeal’s latest opinion about our favorite subtopic — the recovery of attorneys’ fees in eminent domain actions — when our colleagues at the California Eminent Domain Report beat us to it (“Court Clarifies Rules for Recovery of Attorneys’ Fees in Eminent Domain Actions…
While we put the finishing touches on our full write-up of last week’s oral arguments in Horne v. U.S.D.A., No. 14-275 (we posted our initial thoughts after attending the Court’s session here), here are other summaries of the arguments:
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We’re at a conference with the ABA Section of State and Local Government Law in Philadelphia (talking about eminent domain, public use, just comp, and Horne, inter alia), so we haven’t had the time to read this opinion — issued just a few minutes ago — in detail. But it’s a case we’ve been…
