In a case we’ve been following, the Kentucky Court of Appeals has affirmed a trial court ruling which held that a pipeline company could not exercise the power of eminent domain.
The Bluegrass Pipeline is a 1,100+ mile private pipeline that would deliver natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations to the
From the Iowa heartland, we offer the headline of the week: “Iowa landowner claims he was offered prostitute by oil pipeline company rep.“
And you’re not going to beat this lede any time soon: “A southeast Iowa landowner claims he was offered the services of a prostitute in exchange for allowing a
In West Virginia, mineral rights can be owned separately from the surface estate. Not that unusual; something we learned in the first year of law school, in Property I. You might assume that condemning agencies’ lawyers in West Virginia and similar jurisdictions understand this, and counsel their clients accordingly.
Or maybe not, once you
A short one from the Kansas Supreme Court. In Neighbor v. Westar Energy, Inc., No. 111972 (May, 8, 2015), the court concluded that Kansas’ “savings statute,” which allows a party in certain circumstances to refile a lawsuit that had been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice within six months, applied to eminent domain cases.
The details
Even though it is a trial court decision, the opinion in Township of Readington v. Solberg Aviation Co., No. HNT-L-486-06 (May 4, 2015), is well worth reading, because we think the judge gets the process for how courts evaluate claims of pretext correct.
We posted about this case a few years ago, after the
If you have plans to be in Wisconsin or environs in June, the Wisconsin chapter of the Appraisal Institute is putting on its 12th annual Condemnation Appraisal Symposium at the Marquette Law School on Wednesday, June 3, 2015.
One of the featured speakers is Mike Berger on “Current National Eminent Domain Issues,” and there will
We were all ready to write up the California Court of Appeal’s latest opinion about our favorite subtopic — the recovery of attorneys’ fees in eminent domain actions — when our colleagues at the California Eminent Domain Report beat us to it (“Court Clarifies Rules for Recovery of Attorneys’ Fees in Eminent Domain Actions
We’re at a conference with the ABA Section of State and Local Government Law in Philadelphia (talking about eminent domain, public use, just comp, and Horne, inter alia), so we haven’t had the time to read this opinion — issued just a few minutes ago — in detail. But it’s a case we’ve been
In Town of Matthews v. Wright, No. COA14-943 (Apr. 21, 2015), the North Carolina Court of Appeals invalidated a taking, the stated purpose of which was to make a portion of a private road into a public street.
A taking to open a private road to the public? That sure does sound like a
Compare these two reports, filed just over a month apart, about California’s “high speed” rail system, now underway in the Central Valley: