This is the second half of a post from the week before last, about the Hawaii Supreme Court’s opinion in Goo v. Arakawa, No. SCWC-30142 (Feb. 19, 2014).
In that case, the court was presented with two issues. First, what should an appellate court do with a trial court’s judgment when a case…
No one contests that when it condemned property in Norfolk, Virginia to expand the Federal courthouse, the federal government made unreasonable pretrial offers to the property owner. The owner’s appraisals valued the property at $36.1 and $30.7 million, but the government valuation resulted in a $6.175 pretrial offer. After the pretrial dance, the final offers…
Remember the case from late last year in which the Honolulu Star-Advertiser brought a freedom of information/open records lawsuit against the Hawaii governor to force him to disclose the names of judicial nominees? Abandoning the practice of his two predecessors, the Governor refused to release the list of names of nominees transmitted to him by…
Whoa, that was fast: in a case argued on August 2, 2013, and decided on August 9, 2013 (that’s one week from orals to opinion, folks), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Village of Maineville v. Salt Run, LLC, No. 12-4379 (Aug. 9, 2013), held that the property owner/plaintiff forfeited*…
What’s the difference, if any, between a “cemetery” and a burial, and are burials in cemeteries exempt from archaeological review? That’s one of the issues the Hawaii Supreme Court agreed to review in this Order, by which it accepted the DLNR’s application for a writ of certiorari.
Tomrrow morning (Thursday, May 16, 2013), at 9:00 a.m., the Hawaii Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Aloha Tower Dev. Corp. v. State of Hawaii, No. SCWC-30484, in which the court is reviewing the opinion of the Intermediate Court of Appeals which held that a party was not entitled to recover attorneys fees…
Here’s the opinion of the California Court of Appeal (1st District) in an appeal we’ve been following, Lockaway Storage v. County of Alameda, No. A30874 (May 9, 2013), affirming that the County of Alameda is liable for a temporary regulatory taking under Penn Central, and awarding the property owners nearly three-quarters of a…
Here’s the latest decision from the Hawaii Supreme Court applying the “private attorney general” doctrine, which allows a prevailing party to recover fees and costs in certain limited circumstances. In Kaleikini v. Yoshioka, No. SCAP-11-0000611 (May 2, 2013), the court awarded attorneys’ fees and costs incurred on appeal to the plaintiffs who prevailed in…
Didn’t the California Supreme Court already deal the final blow to California’s redevelopment agencies when it held that the state legislature could eliminate redevelopment agencies without violating the California Constitution because what the lege giveth, the lege may taketh away? In California Redevelopment Association v. Matosantos, No. S194861 (Dec. 29, 2011) the court upheld…
In 2009, in the “Superferry” case, the Hawaii Supreme Court, after years of hinting (but not finding a suitable vehicle), formally adopted the “private attorney general’ doctrine allowing attorneys’ fee shifting in certain select circumstances. See Sierra Club v. Dep’t of Transp., 202 P.3d 1226 (Haw. 2009). Under that doctrine, a court evaluating a…
