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Full-Text Articles in Law
Revisiting Background Principles In Takings Litigation, Michael C. Blumm, Rachel G. Wolfard
Revisiting Background Principles In Takings Litigation, Michael C. Blumm, Rachel G. Wolfard
Florida Law Review
Libertarian property rights enthusiasts celebrated the United States Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council as a landmark decision that would revolutionize interpretation of the Constitution’s takings clause and finally fulfill its potential as a vehicle for deregulation. Over a quarter-century later, the Lucas decision has failed to meet those expectations. A major reason is that Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion created an exception that effectively swallowed the rule that Lucas established. Lucas held that land use regulations whose effect on landowners’ property produced a total loss of economic value were per se categorical takings. However, Justice …
Aventura Management, Llc V. Spiaggia Ocean Condominium Association: Condominium Associations Beware, William C. Matthews
Aventura Management, Llc V. Spiaggia Ocean Condominium Association: Condominium Associations Beware, William C. Matthews
Florida Law Review
In late January 2013, the Third District Court of Appeal sent shockwaves throughout the real estate community with regards to condominium associations’ rights as unit owners. In AventuraManagement, LLC v. Spiaggia Ocean Condominium Association (Spiaggia), the appellate court interpreted Florida Statute § 718.1162 in an unprecedented way. The court held that if a condominium association takes title to a unit before the bank forecloses on a defaulting unit owner, the association is jointly and severally liable for all past due assessments with the previous owner that came due, up to the time of transfer of title.3 Condominium associations across …
Migrating Boundaries, Katrina M. Wyman, Nicholas R. Williams
Migrating Boundaries, Katrina M. Wyman, Nicholas R. Williams
Florida Law Review
The boundaries between land parcels usually are assumed to be static and unchanging. However, not all land borders are stable. An important land boundary that routinely ambulates is the border between what is publicly and privately owned along U.S. coastal shores. This coastal boundary recently has been the subject of renewed attention from the courts, scholars, and even the popular press in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. This Article offers an economic analysis of why the boundary generally ambulates, rather than remaining perpetually fixed as land borders usually are assumed to do. It also considers whether the legal border generally …
The Trespass Fallacy In Patent Law , Adam Mossoff
The Trespass Fallacy In Patent Law , Adam Mossoff
Florida Law Review
The patent system is broken and in dire need of reform; so says the popular press, scholars, lawyers, judges, congresspersons, and even the President. One common complaint is that patents are now failing as property rights because their boundaries are not as clear as the fences that demarcate real estate—patent infringement is neither as determinate nor as efficient as trespass is for land. This Essay explains that this is a fallacious argument, suffering both empirical and logical failings. Empirically, there are no formal studies of trespass litigation rates; thus, complaints about the patent system’s indeterminacy are based solely on an …
Playing God: The Legality Of Plans Denying Scarce Resources To People With Disabilities In Public Health Emergencies, Wendy F. Hensel, Leslie E. Wolf
Playing God: The Legality Of Plans Denying Scarce Resources To People With Disabilities In Public Health Emergencies, Wendy F. Hensel, Leslie E. Wolf
Florida Law Review
Public health emergencies can arise in a number of different ways. They can follow a natural disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 tsunami, and the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. They may be man-made, such as the September 11 attacks and the anthrax scare. They may also be infectious. While no pandemic flu has yet reached the severity of the 1918 flu, there have been several scares, including avian flu and most recently H1N1. Few questions are more ethically or legally loaded than determining who will receive scarce medical resources in the event of a widespread public health …
The Like-Kind Exchange Equity Conundrum, Bradley T. Borden
The Like-Kind Exchange Equity Conundrum, Bradley T. Borden
Florida Law Review
The tax-free treatment oflike-kind exchanges presents one of tax law’s most compelling equity conundrums. Tax law generally does not tax property holders on the property’s appreciation but does tax gain or loss recognized by property sellers and exchangers of non-like-kind property. In the basic Aristotelian system, equity requires that likes be treated alike, but the system does not provide criteria to determine what is alike. Depending upon the criteria, exchangers of like-kind property can be similar either to holders or to sellers and exchangers of non-like-kind property. The equity conundrum asks whether tax law should treat exchangers of like-kind property …
In Honor Of Walter O. Weyrach: Florida's Eminent Domain Overhaul: Creating More Problems Than It Solved, Scott J. Kennelly
In Honor Of Walter O. Weyrach: Florida's Eminent Domain Overhaul: Creating More Problems Than It Solved, Scott J. Kennelly
Florida Law Review
A knock at your front door wakes you. Blurry-eyed, you open your door to a government official who tells you that the city would like to purchase your home for a price slightly greater than fair market value. According to the official, most of your neighbors have already agreed to sell their homes so that your “distressed” neighborhood can get an economic facelift, which will include a multi-tower condominium complex. While you briefly consider selling, you are bothered that the government will not put your property to what you deem a traditional public use. Quickly remembering that your state representative …
Broke But Not Bankrupt: Consumer Debt Collection In State Courts, Richard M. Hynes
Broke But Not Bankrupt: Consumer Debt Collection In State Courts, Richard M. Hynes
Florida Law Review
Virginia, with a population of about seven million, has averaged more than a million civil filings a year since the late 1980s. The overwhelming majority of these filings seek to collect debts from consumers, and most judgments go unpaid. Despite this apparent insolvency, civil litigation appears to be only tenuously related to consumer bankruptcy whether one looks at Virginia or at the nation as a whole. Nationally, the non-business bankruptcy filing rate rose by more than 350% between 1980 and 2002, while the civil filing rate rose by about 12%. Prior research suggests that relatively few bankrupt debtors have been …