We’ve covered this topic before (see here, here, and here), but we haven’t heard much about it lately. But thanks to this new article by colleague Dwight H. Merriam, we can get back up to speed.
In “Eminent Domain for Underwater Mortgages: Already on the Way to the Bottom of
“Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Chief Justice Earl Warren,
Brown v. Board of Education
“The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.”
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
dissenting in Lochner v. New York
“…prejudice against discrete and insular minorities…”
Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, in footnote 4
Readers know that some jurisdictions have statutes which permit private condemnations — actions in which the owner of a landlocked parcel can exercise eminent domain to take the property of a neighbor for access. They are somewhat like common law easements by necessity, and we’ve seen then in Pennsylvania (private takings still must serve a
This opinion isn’t big news, but come on, it’s about two of our favorite topics (eminent domain and appellate jurisdiction), it’s short, and it’s from the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands. How often do we get those? Plus, we’re just interested in how courts from fellow island jurisdictions rule.
Bottom line: in a
There’s nothing new in the California Court of Appeal’s opinion in Rancho de Calistoga v. City of Calistoga, No. A138301 (July 7, 2015), which is probably why the court didn’t designate it for publication.
But read it anyway, since there’s some interesting bits. Nothing in the details, mind you, but in the overall vibe of
Here’s the Complaint, filed late last week in an Oklahoma federal court, challenging the EPA and Corps of Engineers’ new “waters of the United States” rule under the Clean Water Act.
According to the lawsuit, the new WOTUS rules are an attempt to expand the regulatory authority of the agencies well beyond what the
Even though the defendant in Martinez v. California Dep’t of Transportation, No. G048375 (June 12, 2015, ordered published July 7, 2015) was Caltrans, this was not an eminent domain case, but rather a tort case about whether the agency negligently designed a roadway which caused Mr. Martinez to crash his motorcycle.
But no
There’s apparently a huge backlog in California of liens which workers’ comp medical providers file to seek payment for services they’ve provided to injured workers.
These are liens possessed by service providers for workers whose employers declined to provide treatment on the ground it is not work related. In those cases, the worker may seek
Nobody’s perfect, as much as we may want them to be. Least of all fictional characters. But Atticus Finch, the Alabama lawyer portrayed in the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the celebrated film, seemed above reproach.
The first year we sponsored the Law in Film festival, we had to feature “
In North Carolina, a property owner has a right to direct access to adjacent highways, and “[i]f the State’s action eliminates all direct access to the abutting road, then the action is ‘a taking as a matter of law.'” Dep’t of Transportation v. Harkey, 301 S.E.2d 64, 71 (N.C. 1983). And it doesn’t matter