Check out, the latest from Professor Timothy Harris, “Revisiting Palazzolo: The Blurry Lines Between Ripeness and Standing that Enable Windfalls,” 73 Kan. L. Rev. 289 (2024). He dives into the question of whether an owner who acquires property already subject to regulations that allegedly work a taking may assert a claim, or does
The owner’s land is a peninsula most of the time, but when Flathead Lake, Montana, rises a few months each year, it needed a bridge to access. So it asked the County “How about a bridge? We will only use it when the water rises.” County said yes, issued a permit.
NIMBY neighbors, however, had
The latest edition of the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal (William & Mary Law School) is out, with intriguing Dirt Law scholarship from the luminaries in the field.
Check out the Table of Contents above, and then go here to download each piece or the entire issue. We will note, with a small bit of pride
In what might be the most cliched “New York City” land use situation, check out the Appellate Division’s opinion in Coalition For Fairness v. City of New York, No. 2023-05338 (Dec. 5, 2024).
Want to convert your SoHo-NoHo artist live/work space to unlimited residential use? Be prepared to pony up and pay to the City’s Arts Fund a non-refundable fee of $100 per square foot as a precondition of even filing a building permit.
When owners challenged this fee as unconstitutional under Nollan/Dolan/Koontz/Sheetz, the trial division said no. But the Appellate Division held otherwise, concluding that the imposition of the fee lacked an essential nexus and was not roughly proportional to whatever impacts “certified artists” (who knew the government was in the business of “certifying” artists?) suffer when an owner converts.
The opinion, in true Appellate Division style is short (3 pages), so you can just read it. But here’s how the court laid out the analysis:
The ZR’s prohibition on new JLWQA units, coupled with this stated goal of broadening uses and the ZR text providing for conversions away from JLWQA use, further indicates that the City’s long-term land use goal is to phase out JLWQA units (see ZR § 143-13). By contrast, the City’s asserted goal in its arguments on appeal, of supporting art and local artists, is not related to any land use interest (see Nollan, 483 US at 837). Nor does payment into the Arts Fund promote the asserted legitimate end of preserving JLWQA stock for certified artists, as the Arts Fund does not pay for joint living-work units or other housing for artists, much less offer benefits specifically to certified artists. Instead, money from the Arts Fund “shall be allocated . . . to support arts programming, projects, organizations, and facilities that promote the public presence of the arts within the [SNX] District and surrounding neighborhoods,” with priority given to “under-resourced organizations and under-served areas” (ZR § 143-02).
Slip op. at 3.
And no proportionality either, because “there is no evidence of negative impacts on certified artists arising from the changes in zoning. Instead, [the City] represented during the approval process that there was a ‘scarcity of certified artists able to purchase’ JLWQA units, due to an ever-decreasing number of annual artist certifications the previous decade.” Id.
Declaratory judgment and injunction issued.
Check it out.
Coalition for Fairness v. City of New York, No. 2023-05338 (N.Y. App. Div. Dec. 5, 2024)
Continue Reading NY App Div: Requiring Art Fee “Donation” To Get Building Permit Lacks Nexus, Proportionality
Strong letter to follow!
A long-ish read (32 single-spaced pages) from the Federal Circuit in City of Fresno v. United States, No. 22-1994 (Dec. 17, 2024), but worth reading.
Not only will you get a crash course in how water is allocated in California’s vast central valley (as the billboards above, set up along
Check out the opinion of the Court of Federal Claims in Nix v. United States, No. 23-704C (Dec. 11, 2024). Fascinating stuff.
We post it here not because it breaks new ground, but due to the subject matter of the lawsuit: the alleged taking of a film that captures (in part) the assassination of
We’ve been following a Second Amendment case, Hawaii v. Wilson, as it awaited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision whether to accept review. Not because it is relevant to the usual subjects of this blog, but because a friend and colleague is Counsel of Record for the petitioner, and we’re just naturally interested in cases
The latest state supreme court decision involving a takings challenge to a statute permitting precondemnation entries, this time from Iowa.
In Summit Carbon Solutions, LLC v. Kasischke, No. 23-1186 (Nov. 22, 2024), the Iowa Supreme Court concluded that, at least on its face, Iowa’s entry statute for hazardous liquid pipelines, which permits
Lake Worth: the “lago” in Mar-a-Lago
You know his name. He’s taken on the City of Riviera Beach twice at the U.S. Supreme Court. And won both times. The houseboat that isn’t a boat. The government can’t shut you out from speaking your mind simply because you irritate them.
That’s right, it’s Fane
