Eminent Domain Report

According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the answer is a definitive yes. 

Generally speaking, Pullman abstention permits a federal court to stay a federal claim to allow a state court to resolve a state issue that could either eliminate or narrow the scope of the federal claim. In order to invoke Pullman abstention, the federal claim must also touch on a sensitive area of social policy and involve an undecided question of state law.

In Gearing v. City of Half Moon Bay, the Gearings asserted that under California’s Housing Crisis Act and California legislation passed ...

If you know someone with property that borders, is adjacent to, or abuts a natural lake, pond, bay, sea, or ocean, they may have littoral property rights. What that means is they may have the right to build a pier out to the line of navigability, a right to navigation, a right to accretion, and a right of access. I say “may” because these rights can be qualified rights, or simply nonexistent. Furthermore, determining whether such rights exist and, if you are lucky enough to have them, their extent can be a complicated endeavor. Then again, sometimes the analysis can be quite simple, such ...

We've been following the Guggenheim case for more than a year now, and in the last week or so, there have been a number of developments.  As a quick recap, this decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the City of Goleta's rent control ordinance - which had the effect of transferring the vast majority of a mobile home park's value from the park owner to the tenants - did not constitute a taking.  The decision followed an earlier decision by a different panel of the same court, in which the court held that the ordinance did qualify as a taking. 

Not surprisingly, the owner then sought ...