The question in today’s case is an old one: can you own wild animals?
In Texas Parks & Wildlife Dep’t v. RW Trophy Ranch, Ltd., No. 15-24-00112-CV (Apr. 10, 2025), the Texas Court of Appeals said no. At least not when that wild animal is a white-tailed deer.
Here are the facts.
Here’s the latest cert petition from the desk of Michael Berger, a property rights case with an equal protection element.
Demarest wanted to subdivide. Not that big a deal, right? Well, apparently it was. The Petition alleges that the Town had a burr under its saddle about the guy for a while, going back
Check out the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit’s recent opinion in Knellinger v. Young, No. 23-1018 (Apr. 11, 2025).
It’s worth reading because the court doesn’t fall into the common trap of concluding that although an owner need not exhaust administrative remedies before asserting a takings claim, he nonetheless doesn’t have
Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following closely (and disclosure: our firm filed an amicus brief in the Texas Supreme Court).
First, the bottom line: in The Commons at Lake Houston, Ltd. v. City of Houston, No. 23-0474 (Mar. 21, 2025), the Texas Supreme Court held that merely because a regulation
The opinion gets that diagrams are good.
Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following.
A case that should end up in Property casebooks (it will almost certainly make an appearance in our William and Mary Eminent Domain and Property Rights course in the fall).
Dirt lawyers know the “ad coelum”
Wondering what happened to that case we posted about last week, where our outfit is representing property owners in a federal court challenge to a Rhode Island town’s efforts to take their land by eminent domain?
Well, here’s the latest. The court just issued this Temporary Restraining Order. Read it for the details.
Today we have a guest post by New York colleague Jennifer Polovetsky, who writes about an exactions case that is headed for the New York Court of Appeals. Disclosure: our firm represents the property owners in that court.
Thanks to Jennifer (and to the New York Law Journal) for allowing us to republish her
Eminent domain has been on our mind a lot lately.
But did you know there’s an award-wining play, “Eminent Domain?” Neither did we. Based on a book, it appears.
Soon to be on the stage at Lincoln, Nebraska’s Lied Center for the Performing Arts, produced by the Angels Theatre Company
Before we go further, a disclosure: this is one of ours.
Here’s the Complaint for Violations of Constitutional and Civil Rights, filed yesterday by the Santoro Family in federal court in Rhode Island. This lawsuit challenges, under the Public Use Clause, a RI town’s eminent domaining the family’s land for the ostensible purpose
Lawprof Timothy Mulvaney has published “Reconceptualizing ‘Background Principles’ in Takings Law,” 109 Minn. L. Rev. 689 (2025).
If the title alone doesn’t grab your interest, here’s the summary from the article’s introduction:
Both libertarians and progressives rejoiced in the result reached by the Supreme Court in the 2023 matter of Tyler v. Hennepin County. This Article asserts that such unified celebration has overshadowed the extent to which the Supreme Court’s reasoning calls into question even our most foundational assumptions about the meaning of property and the takings protections the Constitution affords to it. Followed to its literal end, Tyler remarkably suggests that owners may well need to ground their expectations in the background principles of property laws endorsed by a majority of states rather than in those underpinning the laws of their own state.
Suspicious that the Court intended such a revolutionary upheaval of the state variations that have characterized our federalist system for more than two centuries, the Article contends that Tyler is better interpreted as an epic failure in judicial transparency: The opinion reflects a sly reticence to acknowledge the reality that resolving competing claims to property demands moral judgment regarding the background principles of property law. In following this deceptive course, Tyler invites a race to legislative homogeneity and erects a dangerous barrier to states’ abilities to innovate in the face of evolving social, economic, and environmental conditions.
Check it out.
Continue Reading New Article: “Reconceptualizing ‘Background Principles’ in Takings Law,” 109 Minn. L. Rev. 689 (2025)
