Our thanks to a new colleague from the U. Maine Law School, who gave us the heads-up about a recent decision from that state’s supreme court about private ownership of beaches, Almeder v. Town of Kennebunkport, No. Yor-12-599 (Feb. 4, 2014).
Littoral property owners sued the Town to determine who owns certain portions of
I have a long-running and good-natured contest with my Owners’ Counsel and ABA colleague Dwight Merriam about who gets items of interest “fastest with the mostest.” More than a few times has he sent me items, only to find out that we’ve already posted on the subject, or there is a post in the
Here’s the Answer Brief on the Merits, filed last week in the California Supreme Court in City of Perris v. Stamper.
That’s the case in which the court is considering whether, in the context of determining just compensation, the judge or the jury gets to decide whether a city’s exaction is something that
Looks like they’re at it again, a solution in search of a problem: a bill has been proposed in the Hawaii Legislature to create an “Environmental Court,” whose mission would be to handle “environmental disputes” arising under a wide range of state statutes:
…administrative proceedings and proceedings for declaratory judgment on the validity of agency
The Hawaii Supreme Court has been on a roll lately, giving us a series of decisions clarifying appellate procedure. So in the past couple of months, we’ve got cases about appealability, dismissing appeals for a brief not conforming to the rules, and what is a final appealable order. Good stuff for those
Update 2/19/14: the Honolulu Star-Advertiser has this report (“The appellate court decision was an ‘overwhelming victory for the city from an ideologically diverse panel, said Robert Thomas, a Honolulu-and San Francisco-based attorney who attended the hearing in August. The panel comprised Judges Stephen Reinhardt, Mary Schroeder and Andrew Hurwitz. ‘All three of them agreed. They
Update: a deeper review of the opinion here.
The Ninth Circuit has affirmed the District Court’s decision upholding for the most part the environmental review of the Honolulu rail project. Here’s the summary from the court:
The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal of plaintiffs’ claims under the National Environmental Policy Act and Section 4(f) of
Here’s the Verified Petition and Complaint, filed last week, in which a coalition of New York landowners sued the governor, claiming that the state is dragging its heels in its environmental review of fracking. We’re interested because a bad on fracking may lead to takings problems, although this lawsuit does not raise such
There’s not much doubt that the now-notorious large-scale unpermitted upland grading and grubbing by a Kauai property owner on its private land caused the runoff that catastrophically damaged the adjacent beach and the reef offshore. The damage was pretty bad, and resulted in the “largest storm water settlement [with the federal EPA] in the United
Looks like eminent domain and Hawaii are in the news today. Here’s what we’re reading: