Property Rights

In 1975, California enacted the Agricultural Labor Relations Act principally to govern relations between the United Farm Workers union and agricultural employers. While the Union and their interests had lobbied for a provision in the Act allowing labor organizers to access private employer property to solicit worker support, the legislature did not ...

Almost a year ago I wrote about a bill pending in the New Jersey legislature that would’ve created an occupational license for music therapists in the state. Fortunately, that bill didn’t make it through the legislature, and the legislative session ended before the bill could get a full vote. Rather than die with dignity, however, R ...

This Thursday at noon, Mark Miller (that’s me) of PLF’s Atlantic Center will present a Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminar on Successful Oral Arguments in the Appellate Courts: Lessons Learned in the Supreme Court of the United States and the Courts of Appeal. The presentation, hosted by the Friends of the Rupert J. Smith Law Lib ...

Readers of this blog are familiar with our unanimous victory in Sackett v. EPA in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled landowners had a right to immediate challenge of EPA compliance orders in federal court. Subsequent to Sackett, we won Army Corps of Engineers v Hawkes; another unanimous Supreme Court victory in which the court … ...

Californians are accustomed to controversy when it comes to public employee pensions.  Although state and local governments across the country were left without adequate funding of pension obligations following the Great Recession of 2008-2009, California’s shortfall–estimated to be around $475 billion–was the biggest. The Cali ...

Today we filed this amicus brief asking the California Supreme Court to overturn the flawed decision in T.H. v. Novartis, which would essentially impose never-ending tort liability on brand-name drug manufacturers for injuries caused by their generic counterparts.  By adopting an expansive theory of liability, the law threatens to drive up the cos ...

Good intentions. Horrible execution. Disastrous results. That pretty much sums up the federal government’s mismanagement of water supplies in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to help Delta smelt and salmon species. Water diverted to help declining populations of fish listed under the Endangered Species Act has created severe collateral damage ...

Earlier today, PLF attorneys filed the reply brief in 616 Croft Ave, LLC v. City of West Hollywood. As you may recall, this case arose from the City’s demand that husband and wife entrepreneurs Shelah and Jonathan Lehrer-Graiwer pay a $540,000 “affordable housing” fee in order to get the necessary permits to build new homes. R ...

Federal wildlife regulators have a legal responsibility to consider the impact of federal actions on endangered wildlife. That is their legal argument for their program to de-water the farms and communities of California’s San Joaquin Valley, by holding that water for endangered fish in the Sacramento Delta instead. But life comes at you fas ...