Land use law

The U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii (Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima sitting by designation, because the entire Hawaii district court bench is recused) has issued an Order on Cross-Motions for Summary Judgment in the federal challenge to the Honolulu rail project. 

More to follow after a chance to read it.

Our past

The three-part Penn Central test for an ad hoc regulatory taking tasks courts with evaluation of the economic impact of the regulation on the property’s use, the property owner’s distinct investment-backed expectations, and the character of the government action. Throw all of these “factors” into a pot, stir, and voila, the answer of whether

If you need another reminder of what land use and zoning law looks like on Kauai in practice (and, in turn, in Hawaii generally), see this article, Hanalei vs. Hanalei in The Garden Island newspaper. It’s about a proposal to develop a new resort that (not surprisingly) is “meeting staunch opposition from a rapidly growing

Rice-cookerCheck out this complaint, filed last week in federal court in Honolulu by a Kauai councilmember against the County of Kauai, a Planning Department Official, and the Kauai prosecutor. The councilmember claims the defendants maliciously prosecuted him for a zoning violation.

And just what was the alleged zoning violation?

While the Planning official was

Here are links to worthwhile reads, all with a takings flavor:

Here’s the property owner/petitioner’s Reply Brief in Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n v. United States, No. 11-597 (cert. granted Apr. 2, 2012), the Supreme Court takings case scheduled to be argued on October 3, 2012.

The Federal Circuit held that flooding caused by the Corps was only temporary that destroyed G&F’s trees did not

In Moore v. City of Middletown, No 2012-1363 (Aug. 30, 2012), the Ohio Supreme Court held that a property owner did not have standing to bring a regulatory takings claim when a “foreign municipality” (the neighboring city) rezoned an adjacent parcel, because the municipality did not have jurisdiction to exercise eminent domain over his

Here’s a few reports worth reading:

Thanks to Municipal Minute for pointing out a new blog that should be of interest to our readers. Our friend and colleague Dwight Merriam and his firm are publishing RLUIPA Defense a “one-stop comprehensive site stocked with cases, trial materials, briefs and scholarly articles all about avoiding and defending against claims taken under the Religious

Here’s the latest inverse condemnation opinion from the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a case involving overflights from an adjacent airport. The case arose when property owners asserted that an extension of the runway by 1500 feet was a taking. The trial court dismissed the property owners’ inverse condemnation claims, but the court of appeal reversed