California Eminent Domain Report

We reported several months ago about the property owner impacted by the expansion of the Everglades National Park petitioning the US Supreme Court to determine how to treat the government's enactment of tougher zoning standards that decrease the value of property which the government may want to acquire in the future.  The issue presented was whether the government's actions must be the primary cause of the precondemnation depression of the property's market value, or whether there must only be a nexus between the government's actions and the depressed market value.

This is an ...

One of the big eminent domain stories of the last few weeks involved the oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court in the Florida beach case.  That case involves whether a government program to add sand to parts of the Florida coastline, creating new public beaches in front of private property that had been beach front constitutes a taking.  For more information about that case, see my December 15 article, "Erosion Control, or Coney Island South?" published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal. 

Now, two other water-related takings issues are making news.  The first, as reported December 14 by ...

The Cato Institute's blog has an interesting post concerning the government's ability to induce local government agencies to enact tougher zoning standards that decrease the value of property which the government may want to acquire in the future. 

The post, titled "A Special Kind of Eminent Domain Abuse," deals specifically with the federal government's actions with respect to property it has contemplated acquiring for 30 years in order to expand the Everglades National Park.  The post  by Ilya Shapiro reports that in the case of 480.00 acres of Land v. United ...