Due process

We’re certainly not going to delve in detail into the 109 single-spaced pages of the majority and dissenting opinions in the New York Court of Appeals’ ruling in Regina Metro. Co., LLC v. N.Y. State Div. of Housing and Community Renewal, Nos. 1-4 (Apr. 3, 2020). New York’s rent control law is infamously labyrinthine…

Here’s another complaint (here’s the first) challenging a state’s business shut-down order as a taking. This time it is Colorado, and the complaint seeks an injunction and compensation.

Here are the highlights:

  • “As a result of the [shutdown] Orders listed above that restrict the gathering of more than ten people at a time,

…

Real_liberty

Here’s what we’re reading today, spurred by the headlines swirling around all of us. Mostly cases about the role of the courts when government curtails liberty or property rights under its police or emergency powers. We’ve now seen the first lawsuit claiming that an order to shut down businesses is a due process violation and…

Well, here it is. What looks like the first complaint to be filed challenging a state governor’s order to shut down businesses to “flatten the curve.” 

The complaint seeks class action status, and raises section 1983, due process, and Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment takings claims. It seeks damages, compensation, a declaratory judgment, and, interestingly, an…

The materials we were reading yesterday (particularly Steve Silva’s “History: Fire and Blood(worth),” got us to thinking. There, Steve wrote about the  September 2, 1666 London fire which destroyed 80% of the city, the government’s emergency powers, and compensation. He also brought up a subject we had not know of before: the subsequent…

Front page

Here’s one for our Hawaii folks, in case you all are curious about the origins of the analytical framework which courts use to review the legality of measures taken by the authorities in the name of “public health” that have an impact on the uses of private property.  

As far as we can tell, The …

The current headlines — and a couple of inquiries from colleagues and clients — got us to thinking about government power in times of crisis and the tension between that power and property and other individual rights. 

On one hand, court decisions going back over the centuries have told us that courts are reluctant to…

Here’s the cert petition we’ve been eagerly awaiting in a case we’ve been following about Seattle’s rewriting of the traditional lessor-lessee relationship.

The petition arose out of facial takings and due process challenges to Seattle’s “first in time” rule for residential leasing. The city adopted an ordinance requiring owners to rent to the first tenant…

Missed out on the 2021 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference swag?

Well fear not: here’s your chance to get your high-class reminder — a kit of road warrior essentials — to save the Conference date on your calendar. We’re already underway with planning the agenda and faculty, so it’s never too soon…

EX A

Here’s the cert petition that we’ve been eagerly waiting to drop in a case we’ve been following (and which gathered a lot of public — and academic — attention and outrage). 

Yes, this is the case where the Village police pretty much destroyed a family home in the course of their efforts to dislodge a…