Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following. The owners of the trademark of the famous baseball player Roberto Clemente asserted a physical takings claim after the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico used a likeness of Clemente on commemorative license plates, among other things. The First Circuit rejected the takings claim…
Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Is Trademark Property Subject To The Same Takings Rules As Other Private Property?
Not a lot that’s earthshaking from the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Sablan v. Commonwealth Utilities Corp., No. 2024-SCC-0023 (June 20, 2026), but we’re posting it because its holding — an entity lacking the power of eminent domain may nonetheless be liable for inverse condemnation — is important because it rightly concludes that the focus of the calculus in these cases is on the infringement of the property owner’s rights, not the technicalities of the government’s power.
Continue Reading “The constitutional duty to provide just compensation arises from the act of taking private property for public use, not the formal possession of eminent domain authority.” Entity Lacking Eminent Domain Power Can Be Liable For Taking Property
Here’s the cert petition (filed yesterday) which asks whether a takings challenge to rent control which is justiciable under Article III (plaintiff has suffered a concrete injury that is fairly traceable to the challenged restrictions, and a ruling will redress that injury) may nonetheless be dismissed because the court believes that if the owner would only continue to chase the government via its own administrative procedures, she might get relief (thus relieving the courts of the burden of making a ruling). That’s right, the “prudential ripeness” question that has divided the lower courts.
Continue Reading New Cert Petition (Ours): Can Courts Choose To Avoid Constitutional Challenges To Rent Control By Making Owners Chase Pointless Denials?
The salient features of New Mexico’s elk management program, including the state’s introduction and efforts to build up the population of elk, the EPLUS (“elk private lands use system”), the mitigation assistance program, and the introduced elk becoming a nuisance, to private property owners are common in these type of things. But like a lot of what we call “wildlife” takings (like this and this, for example), the decision of the New Mexico Court of Appeals in Kiehne v. New Mexico Dep’t of Game and Fish, No. A-1-CA-42309 (June 3, 2026), does not go well for the owners.
Continue Reading Even Though They Have A “Relationship,” Those Elk The State Introduced Are Wildlife Not State Elk, So No Physical Taking When They Invade And Damage Private Property
Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following for what seems like forever (and yes, it is one of ours, so we won’t be commenting). This morning the U.S. Supreme Court without comment denied the City of Marathon, Florida’s cert petition, which asked the Court to review an en banc opinion of the Florida District Court of Appeals which held that the City’s downzoning of Shands Key effected a Lucas taking as a deprivation of economically beneficial uses, notwithstanding that the property could be sold to a third party who could donate it to the city in return for some very watered-down transferable development rights (TDRs).
Continue Reading Good News: Lucas Cert Petition Denied – TDRs Go Only To Just Comp, Not Takings
You remember when the Court of Federal Claims denied the government’s motion to dismiss a takings claim and issued a very readable opinion rejecting the argument that oysters planted on submerged land leased from Louisiana are not “private property.” The CFC opinion held that “plaintiffs have all three essential features of the ‘bundle of rights’ commonly characterized as ‘property’ under Louisiana law.” But like all court orders made before entry of final judgment, the CFC’s opinion was interlocutory. Meaning subject to change. And change it did.
Continue Reading Aw Shucks: CAFED Agrees That Oysters Destroyed By Govt Aren’t Private Property
Here’s a recently-filed cert petition which asks this Question Presented: “Is the application of a prudential rule of exhaustion, where the only relief is voluntary cessation of government’s physical possession, a decision on the merits of an uncompensated Takings Clause claim?”
Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Remember First English?
Yes, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s opinion in Banks v. Charter Twp. of Bloomfield, No. 25-1833 (Apr. 28, 2026) is unpublished, and we usually don’t cover unpublished opinions. But we put aside our usual reluctance to discuss unpublished work because the decision raises an important point: are the rules in “regulatory” takings only applicable when the government has adopted a regulation?
Continue Reading CA6: To Be A Regulatory Taking, There Must Be A Regulation
Check this out a newly-filed complaint, filed in a New York federal court, challenging New York’s ban on hydraulic fracking as a taking. Our firm represents the plaintiffs, so we won’t be saying much here. But we will point out that this one is very much like the O.G. modern takings case, Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922).
Continue Reading New Complaint: NY’s Fracking Ban Is A Penn Coal v. Mahon Taking
Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following. After a loss at the Eighth Circuit, the property owners have filed a cert petition.
This is the case where court concluded that the city’s issuance of a closure order to reVamped after the business ended up on the city’s “blighted list” was not a regulatory taking. The city had issued citations for various code violations, sent compliance orders, and was apparently reacting to a fire on the premises.
Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Invoking “Police Power” Alone Doesn’t Avoid Takings