Check this out, a story in the September 28, 2015 edition of the New York Times, “Owner of Grand Central Sues Developer and City for $1.1 Billion Over Air Rights.”
Reminds us of this obscure Supreme Court case we heard about…
The Times reports that the current owner of Grand Central Terminal
As we’ve done every year lately, we’re soon headed to the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference at the William and Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia.
This year, the B-K Property Rights Prize will be awarded to Harvard lawprof Joseph Singer, who is, shall we say, an interesting choice, given his theory that a “robust
Here’s the audio of the recording of the ABA talk we did last week on the Starr International v. USA takings case, “Taking AIG Without Compensation: The $40 Billion Question,” now ongoing in the Court of Federal Claims. The materials and links referred to in the talk are available here. If streaming
For those of you who couldn’t join us at the William & Mary Law School last month for the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference (see our report here), the law school has made videos of the four panel presentations available here.
They’re high quality videos, so be prepared for big downloads, but the
“You can’t have rights without advocates.”
– Michael Berger
We’re at the William and Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia today for the 11th Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference. As we’ve noted earlier, Michael Berger is this
A reminder: the 11th annual Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference is coming up on October 30-31, 2014, at the William and Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia. As we noted earlier, Michael Berger will receive the Brigham-Kanner Prize, so this one is special – he’s the first practitioner to receive the Prize.
More here, from
Like a visiting relative who won’t go home, the idea to seize underwater-but-performing mortgages is still hanging on. The llatest chapter is brought to us by way of our New York colleague Mike Rikon, who writes:
At a press conference on the steps of City Hall, City Council members and housing advocacy groups called
Worth reading: Gideon Kanner, Detroit and the Decline of Urban America, 2013 Mich. St. L. Rev. 1547 (2014), in the forthcoming issue of that august publication. Its not yet available on the law review’s web site, but Professor Kanner has written up a summary on his blog (he might even send you a
Each year, the William and Mary Law School’s Property Rights Project awards the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize to a deserving person “whose work affirms that property rights are fundamental to protecting and preserving individual liberty.” This list of past recipients is an All-Star roster of property scholars and jurists, including lawprofs Frank Michelman, Richard
Be sure to check out this interview with a person we’re proud to call a friend and a colleague, Gideon Kanner, in the most recent edition of Right of Way magazine, a publication of the International Right of Way Association.
“A Fierce Advocate for Just Compensation” is a sitdown with Professor Kanner, and covers a lot of ground, so to speak. The entire piece is worth reading, but here’s what a colleague pointed out as perhaps the best part:
If you represent a property owner in an eminent domain case, particularly an inverse condemnation one, you must understand that your client is persona non grata or the law’s “poor relation,” as U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist once said. The California Supreme Court once stated in an opinion that it was its duty to keep condemnation awards down, which is a hell of a hurdle to overcome when your task is to persuade the Justices that your client was undercompensated by the court below. So in those not-so-good ol’ days of the 1960s, when I walked into court, I had my job cut out for me. Sometimes, the hostility emanating from the bench was palpable. As Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit once noted, what property owners in this field often get from the bench is “thinly-disguised contempt.” This is not a line of work for the faint of heart.