Monthly Archives: October 2021

OCA Honorary Member Michael Berger has authored a new article entitled, “Whither Regulatory Takings.” In it he compares the law that looks to the Fifth Amendment as the guardian against overly stringent government regulation to the everyday legal outcome of most property owners making a regulatory taking claim: recovery denied. As Mr. Berger writes, “For the uninitiated it has become very difficult for a property owner to prevail in a regulatory taking case. Indeed, two commentators likened such litigation to a “high-stakes game of craps.” This statement explains Justice Thomas’s comment that if the Court really does not believe in regulatory takings, it “should say so.” To read Mr. Berger’s outstanding article in its entirety click here. 

Judge Timothy Williams ruled on Tuesday in favor of developer EHB, represented by OCA Member Kermitt Waters, finding that a city’s actions in stalling the developer’s housing plans were tantamount to a taking. In recent years, the Las Vegas City Council either held up or rejected plans to build homes on much of the closed golf course property, leading the developer to claim that such delays and denials were unnecessary and aimed at preserving the private land’s use for the surrounding public. For many years a coalition of residents in the upscale Queensridge neighborhood, which the course weaves through, cited fears of high density and diminishing property values in opposing the developer’s plans.