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An Argument To The State Of Maine, The Town Of Wells, And Other Maine Towns Similarly Situated: Buy The Foreshore - Now, Orlando E. Delogu May 2018

An Argument To The State Of Maine, The Town Of Wells, And Other Maine Towns Similarly Situated: Buy The Foreshore - Now, Orlando E. Delogu

Maine Law Review

This paper has its roots in the finality of what have come to be called the Moody Beach decisions. In the last of these two cases, Maine's Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, held that the public's right to use the intertidal zone was limited to those uses and activities spelled out in the Colonial Ordinance of 16411647: “We agree with the Superior Court's declaration of the state of the legal title to Moody Beach. Long and firmly established rules of property law dictate that the plaintiff oceanfront owners at Moody Beach hold title in fee to the …


Maine Principles Of Ownership Along Water Bodies, Knud E. Hermansen, Donald R. Richards Apr 2018

Maine Principles Of Ownership Along Water Bodies, Knud E. Hermansen, Donald R. Richards

Maine Law Review

This Article provides a summary of the Maine common law of riparian boundaries. It is geared toward practitioners who practice or provide counsel in the area of real property law or who must litigate boundaries and title rights involving water bodies. This Article also includes recommendations for fixing previously undefined boundaries across water. However, readers should be aware that this Article does not attempt to provide an exhaustive survey of all riparian law. In recent years state and federal legislation has further limited or restricted specific landowner common law rights along water bodies.


Florida Rock Industries, Inc. V. United States: Tipping The Scales In Favor Of Private Property Rights At The Public's Expense, Susan E. Spokes University Of Maine School Of Law Apr 2018

Florida Rock Industries, Inc. V. United States: Tipping The Scales In Favor Of Private Property Rights At The Public's Expense, Susan E. Spokes University Of Maine School Of Law

Maine Law Review

In Florida Rock Industries, Inc. v. United States the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the denial of a federal wetlands permit under section 1344 of the Clean Water Act may constitute a compensable taking of private property under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The court remanded the case to the Federal Court of Claims to determine the value of the property remaining after the permit denial, while warning the trial court that the existing record did not support a finding of the loss of all economically viable use of the property. The Federal …


Ed Godfrey: The Justice, The Person, And Some Cases On Property, Merle W. Loper Apr 2018

Ed Godfrey: The Justice, The Person, And Some Cases On Property, Merle W. Loper

Maine Law Review

At the end of 1994 Dean Edward S. Godfrey III stepped down from his teaching position as Professor Emeritus of the University of Maine School of Law. In honor of his service to Maine’s only law school, to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, to the Maine Bar, and to the people of the State of Maine, the Board and Staff dedicate Volume 47 of the Maine Law Review to Dean Edward Godfrey. Reviews by Maine Law School faculty members of Dean Godfrey’s Law Court decisions in several areas of the law follow.


The Long-Standing Requirement That Delegations Of Land Use Control Power Contain "Meaningful" Standards To Restrain And Guide Decision-Makers Should Not Be Weakened, Orlando E. Delogu, Susan E. Spokes Apr 2018

The Long-Standing Requirement That Delegations Of Land Use Control Power Contain "Meaningful" Standards To Restrain And Guide Decision-Makers Should Not Be Weakened, Orlando E. Delogu, Susan E. Spokes

Maine Law Review

Some forty years ago, a leading land use scholar noted that “it has always been recognized that it is an essential part of the judicial function to watch over the parochial and exclusionist attitudes and policies of local governments, and to see to it that these do not run counter to national policy and the general welfare.” Maine courts by and large have discharged this judicial function by consistently striking down unauthorized and overreaching local governmental land use decisions. Several recent cases, however, cast doubt on the Law Court's continuing commitment to guard against the parochial instincts of local land …


Maine Roads And Easements, Knud E. Hermansen, Donald R. Richards Apr 2018

Maine Roads And Easements, Knud E. Hermansen, Donald R. Richards

Maine Law Review

Black's Law Dictionary defines an easement as a right of use over the property of another. An easement is a right in the owner of one parcel of land, by reason of such ownership, to use the land of another for a special purpose not inconsistent with a general property right in the owner. It is an interest that one person has in the land of another. A primary characteristic of an easement, that its burden falls upon the possessor of the land from which it issued, is expressed in the statement that the land constitutes a servient estate or …


Long V. Long: Law Court Ruling Changes The Disposition Of Joint Real Property On Divorce, Marc J. Veilleux Mar 2018

Long V. Long: Law Court Ruling Changes The Disposition Of Joint Real Property On Divorce, Marc J. Veilleux

Maine Law Review

In Long v. Long the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, affirmed a district court divorce decree dividing the parties' residence of thirteen years as marital property, even though the majority of the funds used for its purchase were traceable to non-marital property the husband had acquired prior to the marriage. The governing statute instructed the district court to make an “equitable” disposition of all property acquired by the spouses during marriage, but required that it first “set apart to each spouse the spouse's [separate] property,” including property acquired during marriage by a spouse “in exchange for …


O'Donovan V. Mcintosh: Changing The Contours Of Maine's Easement Law, Michael J. Polak Feb 2018

O'Donovan V. Mcintosh: Changing The Contours Of Maine's Easement Law, Michael J. Polak

Maine Law Review

In O'Donovan v. McIntosh, a real estate developer, Timothy O'Donovan, brought an action seeking, in part, a declaratory judgment concerning the transferability of an easement that he purchased from the defendant, John A. McIntosh, Jr. O'Donovan and McIntosh subsequently filed a joint motion for partial summary judgment to obtain a ruling that would affirm the assignability of the easement in question. Susan Huggins, the owner of the servient estate upon which the easement in question imposed, objected to this motion as a third party defendant. She filed a cross-motion for summary judgment maintaining that the easement in question was not …


The Law Of Taking Elsewhere And, One Suspects, In Maine, Orlando E. Delogu Feb 2018

The Law Of Taking Elsewhere And, One Suspects, In Maine, Orlando E. Delogu

Maine Law Review

The debate as to the meaning of the Taking Clause in the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution seems unending. This short, almost cryptic constitutional provision, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” has over the years given rise to both court challenges and philosophic debate aimed at parsing out the meaning and parameters of this language. As the need for regulatory controls (imposed by every level of government) has increased, the number of challenges and the stridency of the debate has also increased. Moreover, these challenges have increasingly found their way to the …


When Should Rights "Trump"? An Examination Of Speech And Property, Laura S. Underkuffler Feb 2018

When Should Rights "Trump"? An Examination Of Speech And Property, Laura S. Underkuffler

Maine Law Review

In his well-known article, Property, Speech, and the Politics of Distrust, Professor Richard Epstein—a leading contemporary voice in the fields of property theory and constitutional law—makes a simple but compelling argument. There has been, he argues, a mistake in “the dominant mode of thinking about property rights during the past fifty years [that] has been ... of constitutional dimensions.” This mistake, in Professor Epstein's view, is the refusal of the federal courts to accord to individual property rights the same kind of protection from government regulation that is accorded to other constitutional rights. Using free speech as his example, Professor …


Life In No Trump: Property And Speech Under The Constitution, Richard A. Esptein Feb 2018

Life In No Trump: Property And Speech Under The Constitution, Richard A. Esptein

Maine Law Review

The editors of the Maine Law Review have been kind enough to offer me the opportunity to respond to Laura Underkuffler's criticism of my work in her recent Godfrey Lecture, “When Should Rights ‘Trump’? An Examination of Speech and Property,” which appears in the preceding issue. In my earlier writings on constitutional law, more specifically, in my paper, Property, Speech and the Politics of Distrust, I took the position that modern Supreme Court jurisprudence had taken a turn for the worse insofar as it used different standards of review in passing on the constitutionality of legislation. The current position, roughly …


Tax Increment Financing In Maine, Michael G. Walker Feb 2018

Tax Increment Financing In Maine, Michael G. Walker

Maine Law Review

Tax Increment Financing ("TIF") is a statutorily authorized mechanism which enables municipalities to earmark the property tax revenue from designated areas to pay for things such as infrastructure improvement. Lately, Maine municipalities have been using TIF to refund tax revenues directly to private developers in an effort to attract new business. This Comment will begin by briefly explaining the development of TIF in the United States and how it has evolved over time. It will then summarize how TIF works in Maine and the criticism and praise it has received throughout its existence. Next, it will look at research examining …


No Need For Cities To Despair After Bank Of America Corporation V. City Of Miami: How Patent Law Can Assist In Proving Predatory Loans Directly Cause Municipal Blight Under The Fair Housing Act, Jesse D.H. Snyder Feb 2018

No Need For Cities To Despair After Bank Of America Corporation V. City Of Miami: How Patent Law Can Assist In Proving Predatory Loans Directly Cause Municipal Blight Under The Fair Housing Act, Jesse D.H. Snyder

Maine Law Review

Lack of sanguinity for cities was manifest after the Supreme Court’s May 1, 2017, opinion in Bank of America Corporation v. City of Miami. Although Bank of America recognized that cities have Article III standing to sue for economic injuries suffered from predatory lending, the Supreme Court rejected the Eleventh Circuit’s more lenient causation standard, favoring proof of “some direct relation between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged.” Doubtless the result could have been worse for cities suing on the premise that racially discriminatory lending caused municipal blight. The courthouse doors could have closed if the Court had …