On one hand, there’s nothing really new in the Hawaii Supreme Court’s opinion in In re Hawaii Electric Light Co., No. SCOT-17-630 (May 10, 2019), because the court has previously told us the answers to each the component questions in the case:
Remember that Christopher Nolan movie from a few years ago, “Inception,” with its dream-within-a-dream storyline?
Well, that’s what a recently-filed cert petition which asks the U.S. Supreme Court to jump into California’s inverse-condemnation-liability-for-wildfires issue reminds us of with its taking-within-a-taking argument, as detailed in the Question Presented:
Whether it is an uncompensated
The title of this post may have you wondering, especially the part about how a regulation that invites others to physically enter private property, is determined by a court to not be a physical taking. (The court also hints at looking at a physical taking under Penn Central, and not by applying per se
Here’s what’s on the reading list for today:
The city conceded that its street and storm water project resulted in a neighboring commercial property flooding three times, and that “the evidence supported a prima facie case of a ‘partial taking’ of Lenertz’s property.” So far, so good.
But Lenertz had alleged the city’s project caused past and future flooding, and resulted in a
Here’s the Reply Brief in a case which we’ve been following (and in which we filed this amici brief). This is the one in which landowners are challenging the district court’s issuance of an injunction in a Natural Gas Act taking which allow a private condemnor to obtain immediate possession of the land being
A law journal article worth reading (short, not too many distracting footnotes) on takings theory.
In Imperfect Takings, 46 Fordham Urban Law Journal 130 (2019), Professor Shai Stern writes about what he calls the “three safeguards” in eminent domain (due process, public use, and mandatory compensation), and how to evaluate the legality of takings
As part of a federally-funded highway project, the WV DOT took a portion of parcels belonging to several property owners. The partial takings ended up landlocking one tract. So the DOT proposed building an access road to that parcel. The owners didn’t think this was the best idea, because “maintaining a road in that area
The Arizona Corporations Commission has authority to regulate the sale, lease, assigning, mortgage of a public utility’s assets, including when those assets are “otherwise dispose[d] of.” These transactions need the Commission’s approval.
The city intended to exercise eminent domain to take the assets of a water utility. This sure looked like a “friendly” condemnation: the
We’re not quite sure what to make of this story (“The Raisin Situation“) in the New York Times, about the situation in Fresno, California, after the Horne case. You remember that one, don’t you? All about whether USDA’s seizure of raisins in order to maintain the price was a taking.
The piece