Municipal & Local Govt law

Erie
The site of the Erie incident, just a mile away from Mahon’s home.

Here’s an unusual, and kind of interesting one, from a U.S. District Court (Hawaii) in an eminent domain case brought by the County of Maui against the owner of Maui property which is needed for a solid waste disposal site

We were all set to write up a scintillating and detailed analysis of the New Jersey Appellate Division’s opinion in Englewood Hospital & Med. Center v. New Jersey, No. A-2767-21 (June 27, 2024), when we thought, ah, why not just ask you to read our New Jersey colleague Joe Grather’s scintillating and detailed analysis.

Short story is right there in the title of this post. As Joe puts it:

In short, the hospitals argued that requiring them to provide charity care and Medicaid care at a loss was an unconstitutional taking of private property without just compensation.  The trial court analyzed the claims as an “as-applied” challenge.  Therefore, it dismissed some of the claims because of a failure to exhaust administrative remedies.  The “slightly different reason” was that the Appellate Court found the claims were a facial challenge to the constitutionality of the statute, and therefore it analyzed the takings claims under the familiar rubric of whether there was a “direct government appropriation or physical invasion of private property,” or an “uncompensated regulatory interference with a property owner’s interest in their property.” Slip op. at 14.

No physical taking, no Penn Central taking. We recommend you read his entire post “As We Approach Our Nation’s Birthday, a New Jersey Appellate Court Rejects Hospitals’ Takings Claims.”

Joe ends it this way: “I bet the hospitals are preparing their petition for certification to the New Jersey Supreme Court now.  Happy 4th of July!”

That means to stay tuned for more.

Englewood Hospital & Med. Center v. New Jersey, No. A-2767-21 (N.J. App. Div. June 27, 2024)

Continue Reading New Jersey: Forcing Hospital To Provide Care At A Loss Isn’t A Taking

Worth reading: a student-authored piece in the latest issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, “Original Understanding of ‘Background Principles’ in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid.

From the Introduction:

But in Cedar Point, when considering a regulation that authorized union organizers to enter certain businesses, the Court

Check this out, a local government has filed a cert petition seeking reversal of one of those relatively rare circumstances where the property owner won below on a temporary regulatory takings claim for the County’s denial of a development permit.

We won’t go into details on this, but urge you to read the petition, especially

The line between negligence torts and inverse condemnation can be a fine one. In Roman Realty, LLC v. City of Morgantown, No. 220587 (June 11, 2024), the West Virginia Supreme Court came down on the tort side.

Now before we go on, a caution: technically speaking the claimant did not assert an inverse condemnation

BetterCoastalCommnReportCover

The California Coastal Commission is infamous for being the most out-of-control governmental agency in the nation. This regulatory leviathan fancies itself the undisputed czar of land use and other activities in its fiefdom, the California coastal zone.

Created in 1976 as an agency with regulatory authority across California’s 1,000+ miles of coast (and land in

A short one (per curiam is one two-sentence paragraph), with an interesting concurring opinions from the Florida District Court of Appeals (4th District).

In Vazquez v. City of Hallandale Beach, No. 4D2023-0833 (June 12, 2024), the court held that a restrictive covenant that ran with Vazquez’ land (and others in his subdivision, including the

Screenshot 2024-06-12 at 16-43-41 California Courts - Appellate Court Case Information Screenshot 2024-06-12 at 16-43-31 California Courts - Appellate Court Case Information

Disclosure: this one is one of ours, so we’re not going to do a deep dive or do much commentary (must resist!).

Yesterday, the California Supreme Court granted a Los Osos property owner’s petition, and agreed to review an (unpublished) Court of Appeal opinion which held that the California Coastal Commission has