California Eminent Domain Report

Once again, I sit at my desk wondering how all of this happened.  For more than a decade, I worked as an eminent domain attorney in utter obscurity; I'm not even sure my family knew what eminent domain was.  But then the City of New London, Connecticut tried to take Ms. Kelo's little pink house, and everything changed.  Since the Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo decision, eminent domain has become a mainstream topic, coming up in late night talk show skits, and now, taking center stage in the Republican presidential race.

At last Saturday's debate, the use of eminent domain turned into a firestorm of ...

On Wednesday, a Nebraska District Court dealt the Keystone XL pipeline project a heavy blow.  The court invalidated a law that allowed the state's governor to approve the pipeline's passage through Nebraska.  The court ruled that the state's legislature circumvented the Public Service Commission (PSC), which regulates pipelines and other utilities, by allowing the governor to approve the route the pipeline would take through Nebraska.  The law also improperly granted TransCanada the power of eminent domain to acquire property within Nebraska, another decision that should ...

The debate over the extensions of some of the Bush-era tax cuts have been making national news for some time.  It's splattered all over the newspaper and has its own running commentary on the political talk shows. 

But today, there's a different twist for those of us who deal with eminent domain.  Congress is debating the extension of the payroll taxes yet again, but this time, a major eminent domain issue is wrapped up in the fray.

Specifically, Republicans in Congress had said they planned to couple the extension of the tax cuts with a requirement to fast-track approval of a ...