OCA Blog

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...

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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...

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The United States Court of Federal Claims recently issued an important decison in a Rails to Trails case involving some 59 properties adjacent to a former railroad corridor in Newton County, Georgia. The owners were seeking just compensation under the Fifth Amendment stemming from the imposition of a recreational trail across their properties. The primary issues before the court were the amount of just compensation to be paid for...

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The Institute For Justice is celebrating its 30th birthday this month and we, at OCA, couldn’t be happier to share this good news with our own followers. Dana Berliner, IJ’s Senior Vice President and Litigation Director (who is also an Honorary member of OCA) recalls, “When I started at IJ in January 1994, we had yet to litigate our first property rights case. Now, 27 years later, it is our largest...

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A Baltimore couple are at the center of an eminent domain dispute involving the redeveloment of the Poppleton neighborhood, fighting to preserve their home from being taken along with 500 other homes and lots included in a planned redevelopment being pursued by the city and a New York developer. The Eaddy family has owned their home since 1992 and Sonia Eaddy has spent years working as a community leader and...

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When the Altoona/Logan Mobiile Emergency Medical Department Authority (AMED), an entity created by the city of Altoona to condemn property for a powerline to serve a new ambulance station, sought to take Roy Powell’s property, he objected. Represented by OCA Member Mike Faherty, Powell challenged the authority’s eminent domain power as well as the overly broad nature of the taking. On Tuesday, Powell was vindicated, when a three-judge panel...

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently announced state plans to build a border wall where the Trump administration left off. During his campaign and presidency, former President Donald Trump promised the construction of a wall along the border between the southern United States and Mexico. That construction was halted when President Joe Biden took office in 2021. Recently, Texas OCA Member Charles McFarland was asked to weigh in on Govenor Abbott’s...

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in Cedar Point v. Hassid  that California’s “access regulation” law allowing union organizers to enter agricultural property for a certain amount of time without the owner’s consent, constitutes a per se  physical taking. In 2015, union activists entered Cedar Point Nursery seeking to encourage farm workers who worked there to join the United Farm Workers union. But the farm owner, Mike Fahner, didn’t give the union permission to...

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The Bayou Bridge Pipeline company must pay owners their attorneys fees after they prevailed in obtaining compensation awards based on the company commencing  work on their lands before getting legal permission, the Louisiana Supreme Court recently ruled. The seven justices agreed that Louisiana’s 1974 Constitution allows attorneys’ fees and litigation costs as part of the just compensation to landowners who win eminent domain proceedings. The company had argued that it...

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OCA member, Stephen Clarke’s representation of owners James and Kathy Chandler, resulted in a jury verdict of $430,000 against the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s taking of their “slice of heaven” atop Bent Mountain. The pipeline company had previously offered them $89,343 for their property. After a trial on value, the jury agreed with the property owner that the construction of the 42-inch diameter natural gas pipeline would cause damages to the their...

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