Property Rights

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” is generally ascribed to Thomas Jefferson.  Given Jefferson’s love for freedom, it’s an apt attribution.  But it has been reported that John Philpot Curran expressed this same sentiment in a speech upon the Right of Election in 1790 (published in a book titled “Speeches on ...

Or so says the United States Army Corps of Engineers about the pictured property.  Can you see the water on this property?  We can’t, which is why we are taking the Corps to court in our newest lawsuit, Smith v. U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Here’s the story: PLF clients Peter and Frankie Smith bought … ...

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 ...