Eminent Domain Report

We have two big IRWA events coming up. 

IRWA Annual Education Conference

The biggest conference of the year, the IRWA Education Conference, starts June 23 in Charleston, West Virginia.  As always, there will be many great education sessions with strong panels of speakers.  There are also some fun social events and -- on Sunday and Monday -- an exhibition hall. 

Nossaman will be holding down the fort in Booth 305A, trying to keep the troublemakers next to us in line.  Yes, OPC, I'm talking about you. 

I will be there with my colleagues Ben Rubin, the incoming President for Chapter 67 in Orange County, and David Graeler, the outgoing President for Chapter 1 in Los Angeles. 

Please stop by our booth if you get a chance.  The last thing I want to do is spend two days talking with two attorneys (despite how charming they both are).  And who knows, if we get our act together, we may even have a raffle prize. 

Chapter 67 Installation Dinner

The second event is approaching much faster.  If you're in Southern California, I hope to see you at Chapter 67's Second Annual Installation Dinner tomorrow night.  We'll be installing the new Board for 2013-2014, and it should be a fun event.  If you need to know who to prepare to belittle, abuse, or otherwise seek to humiliate, here's the incoming Chapter 67 Board:

• President:  the previously-mentioned Ben Rubin of Nossaman;
• President-Elect:  eminent domain attorney Kirsten Bowman of Richards, Watson & Gershon;
• Treasurer:  returning for a second term, Artemis Manos of So Cal Gas;
• Secretary:  appraiser extraordinaire, Stu DuVall of George Hamilton Jones, Inc.; and
• Professional Development Chair: outgoing President Rudy Romo of the City of Irvine.

The dinner is June 12, starting at 6:00 p.m. at 6ix Park Grill in the Hyatt Regency in Irvine.  I'm pretty sure you were supposed to RSVP no later than June 3, so if you want to attend and haven't registered yet, you should probably try to get in touch with one of the Board Members or Katherine Contreras to see if we have space available. 

U.S. Supreme Court Takings Opinion

Yes, I did leave the Supreme Court decision for last.  The Court issued its opinion in Horne v. U.S. Dep't of Agriculture, No. 12-123 (June 10, 2013) yesterday.  We're working on a piece about it and will post more later.  For now, know that the Court, in a unanimous opinion, reversed the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

The Court held that a claim by some California raisin "handlers" that a regulatory enforcement action against them constituted a taking is subject to review on the merits.  The Court remanded the case to the Ninth Circuit to determine whether a taking had occurred. 

If you simply can't wait for our write-up tomorrow, check out the detailed analysis provided by Robert Thomas, Unanimous SCOTUS: There's More To The Takings Clause Than Just "Just Compensation".