Property rights

Screenshot 2022-01-16 at 10-15-33 Alexander Hamilton letter at center of legal fight returned
we tried to come up with a “Hamilton” reference
but
have not seen the show

The Crane family has, for decades, had in their possession — if not their outright ownership — the “Hamilton Letter,” which Alex wrote to no less than the Marquis de Lafayette 1780.

Ownership, however, seems to be disputed

Minebook

We’ve talked about the “playground constitution” before (and written about it). You know this stuff:

The third constitution is what has been labeled the “popular constitution” that exists, unwritten, in the broader culture. I call this the “playground constitution,” embodying rules that a broad swath of the populace believes are part of

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We like oysters. When we think “oysters,” that means going to a restaurant or oyster bar, sitting down, and ordering up a dozen or more. Easy stuff.

But the real work of oyster farming is “arduous, backbreaking work requiring a special dedication.” Avenal v. State, 886 So. 2d 1085, 1110 (La. 2004). It “takes

Here’s a must-read from the Texas Court of Appeals (Second District).

In City of Grapevine v. Muns, No. 02-19-00257 (Dec. 23, 2021), 

Before 2018, the city’s 1982 zoning ordinance authorized “single-family detached dwellings” and didn’t say anything about short-term renting (short-term being defined as less than 30 days). The ordinance didn’t expressly authorize it

Here’s the State of Texas’s amicus brief in support of the property owners in the case now pending in the Texas Supreme Court about whether the developer of the proposed Dallas-Houston “bullet train” may exercise the delegated power of eminent domain as a “railroad company” or an “interurban electric railway company” as those terms are

In this season of “regifting,” this one from the Hawaii Supreme Court about an attempt to “re-seize” property by civil forfeiture.

In Alm v. Eleven (11) Products Direct Sweepstakes Machines, No. SCWC-15-848 (Dec. 20, 2021), the unanimous court held that the notice and related procedures in Hawaii’s civil forfeiture statute are mandatory

You probably already know our Toronto friend and colleague Shane Rayman. He’s the lawyer responsible for the fascinating Supreme Court (Canada, naturally) decision in Antrim Truck Centre, wherein the Court recognized that under the Expropriation Act, Ontario had an obligation to compensate a property owner for “injurious affection” even though the highway project

Check this out, the latest episode of Clint Schumacher’s Eminent Domain Podcast, where his guest is Judge Andrew Edison (who may be familiar to many of you for his ALI-CLE presentation a couple of years ago about the eminent domain angle in the JFK assassination film).

Today, the topic is Robert Moses, NYC

Screenshot 2021-12-12 at 09-10-29 Event Registration

This Wednesday, December 15, 2021, at 1pm ET (10am PT) our PLF colleague Chris Kieser will be presenting an American Bar Association webinar, produced by the Real Property, Probate, and Trust Section, “Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid: Supreme Court Weighs in on Definition of ‘Private Property’ and Implications for the Future.”

Register here

If you knew nothing about a case except that it was public use challenge to a redevelopment condemnation in New York, you’d be on firm footing if you guessed the outcome was not going to be favorable to the property owner. New York, after all, is what one colleague called the worst in the nation