Vested rights

Here are two amicus briefs supporting the cert petition in Estate of Hage v. United States, No. 12-918 (cert. petition filed Jan. 17, 2013). That’s the case in which the Federal Circuit held that a 22-year old takings case was not ripe because even though the agency denied Hage’s every application for a grazing…

A quick one. An op-ed from yesterday’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser by the newly-appointed Director of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting. In “City followed law in issuing Hao Street development permit,” he makes some good points in this piece about building permits for two single-family homes in east Honolulu, points we don’t usually see…

Here’s the inevitable reaction to U. Hawaii law Professor David Callies’ recently-published law review article (and follow-up interview) about the stunning success rates certain parties enjoy in the Hawaii Supreme Court. In that article, the good professor labeled the record of the 1993-2010 Hawaii Supreme Court on property issues “appalling,” so it should come…

We’re sensing a trend here: takings cases where the property owners/plaintiffs are dead by the time their cases get considered by the Supreme Court. The week before last, the Court heard arguments in Koontz v. St Johns River Water Mgmt Dist., No. 11-1447 (cert. granted Oct. 5, 2012), a case where the original landowner…

The Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals, in a unanimous panel opinion authored by Judge Foley, held that a “zoning verification” by the Director of the City and County’s Department of Planning and Permitting is not a “decision of the Director” which a property owner must administratively appeal to the Honolulu Zoning Board of Appeals. Hoku …

You know how we’re always saying that certain parties have an enviable record of success in the Hawaii Supreme Court? Well, now the statistics are official.

The latest edition of the University of Hawaii Law Review published an article by lawprof David Callies summarzing the decisions of the court during the tenure of now-retired Chief…

Here’s what we’re reading today:

  • We know you probably read Professor Gideon Kanner’s blog daily, but in case you missed his thoughts about the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Arkansas Game and Fish Comm’n v. United States, No. 11-597 (Dec. 4, 2012), please read them here. Today’s must-read.
  • Today is Pearl Harbor day,

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We’ve talked California raisins before, but the latest is about oysters. Specifically, an oyster farm in a Marin County National Seashore, the Drakes Bay Oyster Company.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar visited the place a couple of weeks ago to see if he would be willing to extend the farm’s existing license, which has been…

Gideon Kanner recently asked “Whatever Happened to Condemnation of Underwater Mortgages?”

Watch this November 23, 2012 interview with the chairman of Mortgage Resolution Partners for the views from the outfit that proposed the idea of using eminent domain to take underwater mortgages. He says the idea is “not dead at all … but…

Believing that discretion was the better part of valor, we didn’t think there would be a challenge to the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals’ opinion in Leone v. County of Maui, No 29692 (June 22, 2012). But we were wrong, and the County of Maui is going all in. 

Update Dec. 12, 2012: cert…