Riverside Property Owner Sues County in Federal Court, Citing New U.S. Supreme Court Decision

Daily Journal (November 5, 2019) Riverside County has asked a federal judge to dismiss one of the first inverse condemnation suits filed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Knick v. Township of Scott that property owners, claiming the government took their land without paying for it, could sue local governments in the plaintiff’s preferred federal venue. “This is really asking the federal district court judge to decide does Knick mean what it means on its face, that you can bring cases in the first instance in federal court, or does it not have any practical effect,” a Riverside property owner’s attorney, K. Rick Friess of Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP, said in a phone interview on Monday. “Certainly my view is, the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t go around overturning cases that weren’t that ancient precedent, if they don’t intend for it to have meaning.” Up until June, based on the 1985 decision in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v Hamilton Bank, the Supreme Court held a property owner could only bring a taking or inverse condemnation suit in federal court against a government defendant if he or she first sued in the state court and exhausted all available remedies. Read More (subscription required)