Property lawyers, dust off your Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and federal judges your long vacay from dealing with regulatory takings and inverse condemnation cases is over, because this just in: by a 5-4 margin (Chief Justice Roberts authored the majority opinion, with Justice Kagan writing the dissent), the U.S. Supreme Court today finally (finally!)
Zoning & Planning
Thursday Round Up: Hawaii Water Law, “New” Property, The Edge Denied!
Here’s what we’re reading today:
- New Ruling In Maui Water Case Still Doesn’t Resolve Old Dispute (Honolulu Civil Beat) – about the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals’ recent unpublished memorandum opinion in a long-ongoing water law fight on Maui. The long and the short of it is the court held that whether a short-term license
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(Draft) California Wildfire Commission Report: Inverse Condemnation Has Got To Go
There’s a lot to digest in the draft workgroup reports of the California Commission on Catastrophic Wildfire Cost and Recovery, which were released yesterday.
But the bottom line stands out: California’s version of inverse condemnation liability — which holds a private utility liable for just compensation and damages if its activity was a cause…
Links And Materials From Today’s Land Use Institute Sessions, Baltimore
Here are the links from today’s two sessions (the first, federal water issues impacting local land use; the second, Bringing and Defending a Takings Case):
- Maui groundwater CWA case
- the public trust along the Indiana shoreline
- tribal fishing rights and … highway culverts?
- WOTUS: son, they’re all my helicopters!
- Auer deference on the chopping
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11th Cir: The Use Of Land Isn’t A Fundamental Right, Even If “What happened to [the owner] here was pretty doggone s[tink]y.”
We’ve been meaning to post the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion in Hillcrest Property, LLP v. Pasco County, No. 16-14789 (Feb. 13, 2019), mostly because of the provocative way it starts off:
The question before us is whether a litigant in this Circuit has a substantive-due-process claim under the Due…
33rd Annual Land Use Institute: Baltimore April 11-12, 2019
Come join us at the 33rd Annual Land Use Institute, in Baltimore, Maryland, April 11-12, 2019.
As the brochure notes:
This Annual Land Use Institute program is designed for attorneys, professional planners, and government officials involved in land use planning, zoning, permitting, property development, conservation and environmental protection, and related litigation. It not only…
Upcoming Webinar: How Land Use and Natural Resource Regulations are Shaping the Legal Cannabis Industry
It’s easy when legal cannabis or medical marijuana is involved to make a joke.
But (for now) we’ll resist that temptation and simply tell you about a webinar our colleagues at the American Planning Association are putting on about our favorite thing … Land use law. (What did you think we might say?)
Thursday, March…
Indiana App: No Inverse Claim Where Government’s Permanent Physical Invasion Of Property Happened Before Purchase
The bulk of the Indiana Court of Appeals’ opinion in Grdinich v. Plan Comm’n for the Town of Hebron, No. 18A-PL-1050 (Feb. 28, 2019) is devoted to details of land use law, specifically exhaustion of administrative remedies. If that floats your boat, we’ll let you read it.
What caught our eye was at the…
Hawaii App: Slipshod Investigation By Planning Department Cannot Support Vacation Rental Citation
Those of you interested in the ongoing debate about vacation rentals (aka TVR’s) (in Honolulu, the minimum period a property owner can rent in a residential district under the zoning code is 31 days, unless the owner possesses a nonconforming use permit) should read the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals’ published opinion in Dao v. …
Wrapping Up 2018, And Previewing 2019’s Most Important Case: Final Briefs In Knick v. Township Of Scott
We’re going to end 2018 with the latest in what we think was the most important issue of the past year (and which, we predict, will be the most important case in takings law for at least a decade when it likely gets decided in 2019), Knick v. Township of Scott, No. 17-647.
That…




