OCA Blog

With $1.2 trillion in federal funds getting disbursed across the country as part of the recently approved Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, many expect a surge in eminent domain activity as state and local governments advance a host of road, highway, bridge, railway and dam projects. But what about the businesses, companies and individual property owners who will be on the receiving end of all this acquisition activity? What should...

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OCA Affiliate Member Jonathan Houghton recently announced that he will be leaving the law firm of Goldstein, Rikon, Rikon and Houghton, where he has practiced on behalf of property owners for many years in the areas of eminent domain, inverse condemnation and regulatory takings to work within the Property Rights Group of the Pacific Legal Foundation. In leaving a law firm that has mean a lot to him, Jon...

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Owners’ Counsel of America (OCA) is pleased to announce that Nina Sawaya, a second year law student attending Denver University Sturm College of Law, will be the first recipient of the Toby Prince Brigham OCA Scholarship. Created in 2021 following the passing of OCA’s founder, Toby Prince Brigham, the scholarship is designed to inspire the next generation of lawyers to take up the cause of protecting and defending private property...

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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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