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Weekly litigation report — January 19, 2019
Oral argument held again in Knick at the Supreme Court On January 16, the Supreme Court heard reargument in Knick v. Scott Township, the case where Rose Knick sued her town after it declared the public could trespass on her property in order to search for some old stones, claimed to be colonial-era graves. Knick is seeking the right to sue in fe ...
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Public interest litigation, Senator Whitehouse, and the Kavanaugh hearings
caption id="attachment_61146" align="alignright" width="300" Anthony Palazzolo and son by Winnapaug Pond./caption Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is not a fan of Pacific Legal Foundation. In the past he has accused us, wrongly, of being a "creepy front group" in the thrall of large corporate deniers of global climate change. We weren't impressed when ...
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Déjà vu : another court disregards precedent and property rights
More than 10 years ago, PLF won an important property rights victory in the U.S. Supreme Court -- Palazzolo v. Rhode Island. That case held that government cannot "put an expiration date on the Takings Clause" by forbidding any property owner from challenging the constitutionality of any regulation that existed at the time they purchased it even if ...
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President's weekly report — January 10, 2014
Environment -- Clean Water Act We filed this reply brief in Hawkes v. United States, the case where a peat farmer is trying to establish that his property is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Corps because it is not connected to a navigable waterway. The owner is trying to challenge the Corps' Jurisdictional Determination in court before spe ...
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President’s weekly report — July 26, 2013
Property Rights -- Victory in North Carolina We finally put an end to the Williamson County remove-and-dismiss gambit in the 4th Circuit with a decision in Sansotta v. Town of Nags Head. As explained in our blog post, Williamson County was a Supreme Court decision that held that a landowner must sue a local or state defendant first in state cou ...
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The government can’t "regulate away" the right to just compensation
PLF attorneys filed this brief today in support of Arkansas landowner Mike Mehaffy's petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Mehaffy owns property on the Arkansas River in North Little Rock. He acquired it in 2000, and in 2006 he applied to the Army Corps of Engineers for a Clean Water Act permit that would allow hi ...