Articles

Monday, the Federal Circuit issued a very good decision for property rights in Lost Tree Village Corp. v. United States. In this case, Lost Tree Village Corp. (Lost Tree) wanted to build a residential development on about five acres of land in Florida. The developer got all of the necessary permits from state and local government. But a federal ag ...

Earlier this month, the Second Circuit rejected a Takings Clause challenge to a New York statute that, by increasing the state's homestead exemption, destroyed a lien holder's property interest. Rather than resolving what sort of property interest the lien was or what test applied to the taking, the Second Circuit concluded that, regardless of the ...

Author: Brian T. Hodges Earlier this year, PLF stepped in to help Kipp and Marilyn Dunlap protect themselves against an uncompensated taking of their vacant residential lot in Nooksack, Washington (located just south of the Canadian border).  As you may recall, the Dunlaps purchased a quarter-acre lot with the dream of building their home the ...

Author: Brian T. Hodges Kipp and Marilyn Dunlap bought a vacant residential lot in Nooksack, Washington with the dream of building their home there.  But the city had other ideas.  You see, Nooksack slough runs through the middle of the Dunlaps' lot, and the city declared that land adjacent to streams constitutes an environmentally se ...

Author: Jim Burling A Florida Court of Appeals held on Wednesday, in Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services v. Toby Borgoff, that the deliberate destruction of over 100,000 healthy citrus trees constituted a compensable taking. The trees had been destroyed because other nearby trees were infected with citrus canker – a disease that disco ...