2013. August 28. 2:00 p.m. I was working the day watch patrol on the Belt Highway. I observed a green flatbed pickup truck driving towards Hilo with a load of open containers loaded with a green leafy substance. I suspected this could either be cabbage or lettuce. I pursued to investigate. Approximately a half a
Someone up in Asheville must’ve really ticked off someone else down at the North Carolina legislature. Because for some reason, the state adopted a statute which, just like that, transferred the city-owned water system to a newly-created county sewer and water district. The statute didn’t change the water system’s operation — and this was key in
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser today ran a story by Timothy Hurley about a new bill adopted by the Hawaii legislature which puts certain cases on the appellate fast-track, “New law could speed process for Thirty Meter Telescope.”
The bill mandates that in certain cases, any administrative appeals skip the usual first two steps (circuit court
A good story for your weekend reading from the Los Angeles Times, “U2’s The Edge and his decade-long fight to build on a pristine Malibu hillside,” about the rock guitarist’s decade-long effort to build his dream home compound in the exclusive coastal town. Running smack dab in to the California Coastal Commission
We thought there was a chance in a case out of San Jose, California, that the U.S. Supreme Court might take up the long-standing issue of whether legislatively-imposed exactions meet the nexus and proportionality unconstitutional conditions tests from Nollan, Dolan, and Koontz. Do those tests require an individualized determination, or is
About this time last year, the Court of Federal Claims held that the federal government was liable for a temporary taking to certain property owners for the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina and the Corps of Engineers’ failure to maintain the “MR-GO” (Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet) canal system. See also a guest post by
In this order, the Hawaii Supreme Court agreed to review (“accepted certiorari” in the local appellate lingo) the Intermediate Court of Appeals’ opinion in Green Party of Hawaii v. Nago, No. CAAP-14-0001313 (Dec. 18, 2015). That decision answered in part the often elusive question of “what is an agency ‘rule’ that triggers the rulemaking
Update: Here’s the syllabus and reading list.
Most of us who practice condemnation law probably didn’t start off in law school thinking “gee, I’d sure like to be an eminent domain lawyer.”
Even if we did, the law school curriculum wasn’t set up to accommodate any such wishes, and the topic of eminent domain
In Ransom v. Village of Cross Plains, No. 2015AP1556 (Apr. 28, 2016), the Village took a part of Ransom’s property, 703 square feet to be precise. The parties actually agreed on the amount of just compensation for the 703 square feet. But Ransom asserted that the Village also took a temporary easement after the
A quick one from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in a federal condemnation, United States ex rel TVA v. 1.73 Acres of Land, No. 15-5530 (May 5, 2016).
The Tennessee Valley Authority condemned an easement on a strip of Mr. Thomas’ undeveloped land (zoned for agricultural/residential uses) for utility lines.