Real Estate & Property Law

Land Use Round Up

By rht

• Professor Ilya Somin posts "Once Blighted, Always Blighted" about how long-lasting "blight" designations are more likely to impede development, not encourage it."

• Charley Foster at Planet Kauai posts "Monkeypod preliminary injunction motion," his analysis of a pending motion for preliminary injunction, seeking to prevent a property owner from removing trees on its property.

• In  Noghrey v. Town of Brookhaven, No. 2006-05365 (Feb. 13, 2008), the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division held that the downzoning of property was not a regulatory taking under Penn Central.  New York Zoning and Municipal Blog posts on the case here, and Professor Patty Salkin summarizes the opinion on Law of the Land here.

• An Indiana trial court has held that a public utility cannot use eminent domain to take property because it acted in bad faith.  As reported here by the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal:

Wymberly's attempt to use eminent domain was "in bad faith" because it had promised, in asking the state for a territory expansion to include the Lynn developments, that it would serve "as many customers as possible." But Whitis said its plan was to serve a "single customer, Lynn," and the proposed route would allow only two or three other property owners besides Lynn to connect.

The court's Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law can be downloaded here (6mb pdf).

• An additional hat tip to Professor Salkin for posting a summary of the New Mexico Supreme Court's opinion in Albuquerque Commons Partnership v. City Council, No. 29792 (Feb. 18, 2008), a case about big box rezoning and moratoriums, among other things.

Full post as published by inversecondemnation on February 25, 2008 (boomark / email).