Articles

City sells townhouse, demolishes it, and then sends new owner bill for the demolition Representing David and Lourdes Garrett, PLF filed  this opening brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to challenge New Orleans’ unconstitutional destruction of a townhouse on their property. The facts are outrageous: They bought property from the city ...

Today, Thomas Frick and the heirs of Barbara Lynch filed this petition, asking the California Supreme Court to grant rehearing in Lynch v. California Coastal Commission. In that decision, the Court held that the two owners had forfeited their right to judicial review of conditions placed on a coastal permit. The owners had asked the California Co ...

Environmental Law: ESA abuse Yesterday, we filed an administrative petition demanding that the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife repeal a regulation that imposes harsh Endangered Species Act restrictions on as many as 150 threatened species that Congress did not intend to be automatically covered. The regulation subjects ranchers and farmers in ...

Does the Constitution protect you from the government taking your equity in your home, land, or business? That’s the question Andrew Ohanessian and Rafaeli,LLC are asking the Michigan Court of Appeals in Rafaeli v. Oakland County. Rafaeli owed the County $8 for overdue taxes, which amassed to $285 in taxes, interest, and fees when the … ...

Late last week the Washington Post published an article by Todd Gaziano of our DC office and me, called D.C. doubles down on the dispossessed. We wrote about Benjamin Coleman and other dispossessed homeowners’ class-action lawsuit against the District of Columbia. Coleman, an elderly veteran who suffers from dementia, lost his home, which th ...

Can the government take a person’s home to pay a $133 debt without paying the homeowner a penny? A case pending before a federal district court, Coleman v. District of Columbia, asks just that question. Benjamin Coleman, an elderly veteran suffering from dementia, owned a house in Northeast Washington, D.C that he’d bought with cash &# ...