Each July, in addition to heat and fireworks, Virginians get to enjoy a slate of new laws going into effect from the past year’s General Assembly session. This year, two bills in the eminent domain realm merit mention. The first, Senate Bill 1260, simplifies the process for condemning authorities making use of the quick take [...]
The Supreme Court of the U.S. is expected to rule soon in a case that could have a profound impact on the development of natural gas pipelines. The case, PennEast Pipeline Co., LLC v. New Jersey, involves a natural gas pipeline project in the northeast. PennEast obtained a certificate of public convenience and necessity from [...]
For as little as the average person can do with land that is submerged beneath rivers and other bodies of water, questions of ownership of such land have found their way into a surprising number of lawsuits. For rivers and creeks that are influenced by tides, the general rule is that the state owns submerged [...]
Coal extraction remains an important industry in the Appalachian region, so claims related to coal and other mineral rights make frequent appearances in the eminent domain caselaw of states in the area. A recent example is a Pennsylvania Supreme Court case involving an inverse condemnation claim asserted by two coal companies against the Pennsylvania Department [...]
Owners of undeveloped land in condemnation cases sometimes try to increase their award by arguing that the project has damaged their land by limiting its development potential. As part of that argument, they often try to introduce into evidence proposed site plans or other drawings showing how the property could have been developed before the [...]
In the continuing litigation over the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Western Virginia, a federal trial court excluded a landowner’s supplement to its expert’s opinion on the ground that it contained new opinions that were not disclosed by the deadline for such reports set forth in the scheduling order. The appraiser, Dennis [...]
The Supreme Court of Colorado recently reaffirmed that, under Colorado law, restrictive covenants are not compensable property interests in eminent domain cases. The case arose when the town of Monument purchased property in a residential subdivision to construct a municipal water tower. Because the lot was subject to the subdivision’s restrictive covenants, which forbade the [...]
Sometimes, when facing long odds, you just have to swing for the fences and hope for the best. Landowners in the path of the Mountain Valley Pipeline took just such a wild swing with a lawsuit they filed in a D.C. federal court. They sought a ruling that Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, lacked the [...]
The Virginia Supreme Court issued its opinion in Hooked Group, LLC v. City of Chesapeake today, ultimately affirming the trial court’s dismissal of the landowner’s case. The facts of the case and contentions of the parties have been described previously on this blog here and here. In short, the landowner, Hooked Group, LLC, owned a [...]
The North Carolina Supreme Court recently upheld a trial court decision in an inverse condemnation case where recordation of a highway corridor map was determined to be worth almost the entire value of the subject property. Under North Carolina’s Roadway Corridor Official Map Act (the “Map Act”), the NCDOT could record a map in [...]