Yearly Archives: 2009

The New York Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in Goldstein, et al. v. New York State Urban Development Corporation d/b/a/ Empire State Development Corporation on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 beginning at 2:00 pm (EST). It is expected that arguments will be available by webcast.

(Williamsburg, VA) – William & Mary Law School will host the Sixth Annual Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Oct. 16-17 in Williamsburg, Va. The conference is presented by the William & Mary Property Rights Project and the Institute of Bill of Rights Law.

The Institute for Justice announced this week that IJ lawyers had reached an agreement with Long Branch attorneys settling the eminent domain actions filed almost five years ago against a group of homeowners whose properties lie along Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace and Seaview Avenue (MTOTSA) in Long Branch.

In a statement on its website, the Connecticut Office of Ombudsman For Property Rights announced the closure of the office effective September 8, 2009 as a result of budgetary constraints. Robert S. Poliner who held the position of the first and only Connecticut Ombudsman for Property Rights served only two years.

On September 4, OCA Hawaii Member Robert Thomas filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Owners’ Counsel of America in Stop the Beachfront Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dep’t of Environmental Protection, No. 08-11 (cert. granted. June 15, 2009).
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether a 2008 Florida Supreme Court decision which upheld the Florida Beach and Shore Preservation Act and reversed more than a century of Florida law constitutes a “judicial” taking. Additionally, the Court will decide whether the Florida court’s decision violated the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee.

A New Jersey appeals court recently ruled that business losses resulting from a temporary taking of commercial property for the repair of public infrastructure must be compensated. In it’s August 27, 2009 opinion, the appellate court upheald a trial court’s dismissal of the New Jersey Department of Transportation’s attempted taking of such a property where its offer of compensation failed to consider the business losses. The appellate court, in State v. Arifee, A-5633-07, adopted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that “an exercise of the power of eminent domain which has the inevitable effect of depriving the owner of the going-concern value of his business is a compensable ‘taking’ of property.”

Willets Point United Against Eminent Domain Abuse (Willets Point United) filed an amicus brief this week in support of a group of fellow NYC property owners, businesses and tenants who are fighting the use of condemnation and the taking of their properties for the proposed Atlantic Yards Arena and Redevelopment Project in Brooklyn. (For more detailed reporting of the proposed Atlantic Yards project, see Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report.) The case, Goldstein v. New York State Urban Dev. Corp., is pending in the New York State Court of Appeals.

Yesterday, Willets Point United Against Eminent Domain Abuse, a group of business and property owners dedicated to fighting eminent domain abuse in the neighborhood of Willets Point, in Queens, NY, met on the steps of City Hall to raise their concerns about the nomination of Judge Sonya Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Willets Point United joins other property rights groups, legal scholars and experts in questioning Judge Sotomayor’s position on property rights, specifically with respect to her participation in the Second Circuit opinion in Didden v. Village of Port Chester.

Here are some things that caught our attention over the past week or so…

Widener University Law Professor D. Benjamin Barros summarizes the property rights case (Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection) recently accepted for review by the Supreme Court in his post: What’s at Stake in Stop the Beach Renourishment. (Our post about this case is available here.)