The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court decision validating $650 million in "certificates of participation" to finance a water district's purchase of 73,000 acres of land owned by a sugar company for Everglades restoration purposes. Certificates of pa...

The Supreme Court of Texas, on certification from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, held that Texas does not recognize a "rolling" public beachfront access easement on Galveston's West Beach. Land patents from the Republic of Texas in 1840, affirmed by legislation in the new s...

A Michigan appellate court voided a 10-year-old commercial lease between the landlord and tenant of a gas station because the landlord failed to disclose that the property is, under Michigan law, a "facility" from which hazardous substances were released or disposed. The court reasoned that because ...

The First Circuit upheld the dismissal of a developer's federal takings claim against two state agencies for restricting its development of a coastal residential subdivision in Rhode Island. In Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172 (19...

The Michigan Supreme Court held that a company's plan to discharge contaminated water from an environmental cleanup site in the Manistee River watershed into a previously unpolluted site in the AuSable River watershed was manifestly unreasonable and that the state agency should be held accou...