Check out this one from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Smiley First, LLC v. Dep’t of Transportation, No. SJC-13300 (May 23, 2023). [But first, a disclosure: our law firm filed this amicus brief in support of the property owner.]
Now that that is out of the way, here’s the case.
Back in 1991, MassDOT’s
When a court’s opinion (even a trial court’s opinion) starts out with the epigram, “‘Freedom and property rights are inseparable, you cannot have one without the other.’- George Washington,” you know you are in for a ride.
So begins the opinion of the Clay County, Iowa District Court in Navigator Heartland, LLC v.
Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following since its inception, this cert petition seeking Supreme Court review of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s affirming the district court’s dismissal of a complaint alleging that New York (state)’s sweeping amendments to its Rent Stabilization (rent control) statute effected categorical and
Thank you to to good folks at ALI-CLE’s The Practical Lawyer, for putting me together with Rajiv Khanna, and memorializing our recent conversation in this piece to be published in next month’s issue: “Conversation With a Colleague: Robert Thomas,” The Practical Lawyer (ALI-CLE June 2023).
Rajiv and I chatted about property law
When we last visited Sheetz v. El Dorado County, we finished with “stay tuned” because we suspected that the California Court of Appeal’s opinion concluding that the County’s traffic mitigation fee is immune from Nollan/Dolan nexus-and-rough-proportionality review because the legislature imposed the fee on everyone (and Sheetz was not subject to paying it because
Missed out on the 2023 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference back in February in Austin, and the legendary “Condemnation 101” track?
Well, here’s your chance to get the knowledge. On May 18, 2023, ALI-CLE is going live with a rebroadcast of that program, including real-time Q & A
A good opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Knight v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville, No. 21-6179 (May 10, 2023), holding that conditions imposed on every development — and not just ad hoc administratively-imposed conditions — must conform to the Nollan-Dolan-Koontz close nexus and rough proportionality standards.
You takings
Here’s a new cert petition, filed this week by Michael Berger that asks whether Knick‘s no-need-to-exhaust-or-chase-state-compensation rule applies retroactively.
The Second Circuit held that no, the owner’s claims were too late, and although Knick overruled the Williamson County rule that kept him from a timely filing in federal court, that’s just too
Here’s an article for your Monday reading, Bethany R. Berger, Property and the Right to Enter, 80 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 71 (2023).
Here’s the abstract:
On June 23, 2021, the Supreme Court decided Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, holding that laws that authorize entry to land are takings without regard to
Shands Key, with the City of Marathon in the background
This just in: in Shands v. City of Marathon, No. 3D21-1987 (May 3, 2023), Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals held that the city’s downzoning the property (Shands Key, shown above in an exhibit from the Key West trial we participated in in June