November 2017

…this is might be it: Lampkins Crossing, LLC v. Williamson County, No. 3:17-cv-00906 (Nov. 14, 2017), in which the District Court dismissed substantive due process, procedural due process, and equal protection claims for not being ripe under Williamson County‘s “final decision” prong. The Williamson County case decided on Williamson County grounds.

Now, we’re

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If case you were thinking you might have missed a big property case that made its way to the Supreme Court, fear not. All of the above issues were raised in the course of yesterday’s arguments in a patent case.

As the transcript in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC

According to this story (“Scott Walker signs bill inspired by western Wisconsin cabin-owners’ court fight“), Wisconsin’s governor has signed into law a new bill which remedies the problem the Murr family faced after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Murr v. Wisconsin, 137 S. Ct. 1933 (2017).

In that case, as you recall

In Long v. Liquor Control Comm’n, No. 16-069125-CC (Nov. 16, 2017), the Michigan Court of Appeals addressed an issue that we’ve been following — takings claims arising from government issued licenses or regulated industries. We wrote about these claims in sharing economy cases recently. See “Property” and Investment-Backed Expectations in Ridesharing Regulatory Takings Cases

An interesting read from the South Dakota Supreme Court, on the often fine line between tort liability and inverse condemnation claims.

A big rain, just weeks after the State completed a highway improvement project which included drainage culverts originally installed in 1949, which could not adequately drain an 8-year rain event. Nearby private property flooded. And

POTUS 1, George Washington, like a lot of other things, said it about our national day of thanksgiving pretty well:

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“Our fincere and humble Thanks … for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to eftablish Conftitutions of Government for our Safety and Happinefs, and particularly the national one now lately

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The work on what turned out to be the first phase on Honolulu’s billions-of-dollars rail project from Kapolei to the Ala Moana Shopping Center isn’t even close to being done yet, but the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation looks like it is thinking ahead to Phase 2, and extending the line from the shopping center

The latest in the “Map Act” inverse cases out of North Carolina. This is a longer post, but you really will want to read the summary, or just pick up the opinion and read it.

These are the cases in which the N.C. Department of Transportation, under the power of the state’s Map Act, for

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Under Colorado law, a property owner has an inverse condemnation claim when “a governmental or public entity with the power of eminent domain takes action that ‘substantially depriv[es] the property owner of the use and enjoyment of the property, but the [entity] has not formally brought condemnation proceedings.'” Kobobel v. Colo. Dep’t of Nat. Res.

Here’s the cert petition in a case we’ve been following from the Third Circuit, Knick v. Township of Scott. 

Read more about the case’s background here. The short story is that the court concluded the Township’s ordinance which requires owners of all cemeteries, public or private, to maintain them was “constitutionally suspect,” but also held