You really have to feel for taxi operators who invested what could be huge amounts of money to obtain a taxi medallion getting whacked by the competition from ridesharing outfits like Lyft and Uber. These services look and feel an awful lot like taxis, don’t they? As we wrote in a recent
Vested rights
Property Lawyers, Read The Supreme Court’s Latest Patent Case
Here’s one we’ve been waiting to drop, but when it did, we were tied up so couldn’t get to it quickly.
Yes, it’s a patent case. But as we explained here, a case that property mavens should be following because it deals with what is “property,” and where an owner goes to resolve…
Cases And Materials From The Takings And Eminent Domain Session At The Land Use Institute

Some of the Land Use Institute faculty, including (front row left), Planning Chair Frank Schnidman and Planning Co-Chair Patty Salkin
Last Friday at the 32nd Annual Land Use Institute in Detroit, I was honored to moderate a freewheeling discussion by a panel of takings experts, Professor Steven Eagle, Minnesota lawyer Howard Roston, and Michigan’s…
Land Use Institute – Detroit
We’re in Detroit the rest of the week at the Mercy Law School for the venerable Land Use Institute, now in its 32nd iteration.
Planning Chair Frank Schnidman has assembled a great faculty including out Detroit colleague Alan Ackerman (above, talking about takings liability for flooding), and we’ll be spending the time talking inverse…
There’s Still Time To Join Us In Detroit: 32d Annual Land Use Institute
Space is filling up, but there’s still time to join us later this month in Detroit for the 32nd Annual Land Use Institute (April-19-20).
We’ll let program Planning Chair Frank Schnidman explain all the reasons why, and we’ll add only these points: (1) it’s a very good program that won’t take much of your time…
New Article: Murr And Other “Blurred Lines”
Here’s an article (“Murr v. Wisconsin: The Supreme Court Rewrites Property Rules in Multiple-Parcel Regulatory Takings Cases“), which we authored along with a colleague, published in February 2018’s Zoning and Planning Law Report, about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Murr v. Wisconsin, the case about the “larger parcel” in…
32nd Annual Land Use Institute: Detroit, April 19-20, 2018
Mark your calendars, plan to come: Detroit, April 19-20, 2018. For what is perhaps the best deal in CLE (tuition as low as $400), the 32d Annual Land Use Institute, sponsored by our section of the ABA, the Section of State and Local Government Law.
The venue is the…
Indiana: Equal Footing Doctrine Means Public Owns Up To The Ordinary High Water Mark
Update: thanks to Daniel Lehmann for keying us in to this case, now being reviewed by the Supreme Court, involving the foundational question of whether title to Equal Footing Doctrine submerged lands is a question of state or federal law. Scheduled for the Court’s 2/16/2018 conference.
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In our experience, rationality…
New York City Uncompensated Takings Pilgrimage, High Line Edition
At first, you might not pay much attention to it. After all, it doesn’t really stick out — elevated rail lines aren’t that unusual in a big city. Street-level trains and pedestrians don’t mix well, and in the early 20th Century, New York State adopted a law which moved some of the lines above…
Supremes Consider Unconstitutional Conditions, Vested Rights, And Property … In A Patent Case
If case you were thinking you might have missed a big property case that made its way to the Supreme Court, fear not. All of the above issues were raised in the course of yesterday’s arguments in a patent case.
As the transcript in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC…







